Goodwill Hunting #20: 2023 predictions

out: Shein hauls, in: clothing swap hauls

Jan 06, 2023

Welcome to Goodwill Hunting, a newsletter curated by Danielle L. Vermeer, a fashion tech leader and avid thrifter obsessed with making fashion more social, circular, and fun. This weekly edition includes 5 handpicked thrift finds, 5 consumer insights and articles to read, and 10 jobs in resale fashion.

♻️ Thrift Finds of the Week

Vintage dress ($32) | Miu Miu flats ($21) | Vintage Courreges earrings ($130) | Vivienne Westwood sunglasses ($50) | Gucci bag ($101)

Sourced from GoodwillFinds and ShopGoodwill. Made with <3 with Landing.

🔮 2023 Predictions

Here are my 2023 trend predictions of what’s In vs. Out.

For this list, I was inspired by consumer insights experts like Casey Lewis, Clayton Chambers, and Rian Phin, as well as community-driven consumer social startups Landing, Diem, Aavia, and Melon.

The predictions are a mix of wishful thinking and trying to be the change that I wish to see in the world. TL;DR: what’s out: fast fashion hauls, productivity hacks, mindless consuming, chasing trends, etc. and what’s in: thrifting, clothing swap hauls, mindful creating, personal style, etc.

What are your predictions for the new year?

📕 Weekend Reading

Keep It Real or Lose Gen Z (Wired, h/t

Casey Lewis

)

The next wave of social platforms are driven by Gen Z’s desire for more authentic and meaningful connections with people with similar interests. In a related Wired article, researchers Meredith Salisbury and Jefferson Pooley shared the term “reactive dynamism,” which describes the cycle of each new social network defining itself against its precursor’s seeming “inauthenticity.” (h/t Keely Adler and Victoria Buchanan in a RADAR signal thread)

Short Story: Value Village (Jonathan Poh)

In 2020, Jonathan Poh won Canada’s CBC literary prize for Value Village, a coming-of-age story of Poh and his family immigrating from Singapore to Canada and having to shop at thrift stores. Poh’s piece cathartically and comically covers the thrift store experience in the 90s—before thrifting was cool.

I was still blissfully unaware of the pain that children could inflict, that "Value Village" could be weaponized as an insult, that simply being could be cause for a beating. I was known in class as "Value Village": the kid who bought his clothes from a thrift store, who tried to pass them off as new. The kid whose immigrant parents had jobs, but still picked pennies from the school parking lot and bought their kids knock-off sneakers.

Thick Mall, a Market for ‘Size L and Up,’ Fills the Gap (New York Times)

Jovana Savic founded "Thick Mall”, a Chicago-based pop-up featuring thrifted and vintage clothes from curated resellers specializing in extended sizes. Consumers say that lack of size inclusivity—especially for those plus-sized—is one of the top reasons that they don’t shop secondhand.

Our addiction to quick, cheap fashion adds 101 million tons to landfills (Business Insider)

More than 100 billion apparel items are manufactured each year. That’s the equivalent of every person on Earth getting 14 new pieces of clothing each year. It’s also more than 2X the number of items manufactured annually compared to 2000.

Why Community-Led is the Future of Innovation (Barry O’Reilly)

More companies and startups are leaning into community-led growth, rather than just product-led growth. According to the 2021 CMX Community Industry Report, 86% of respondents said community is critical to their mission, and 69% plan to increase their investment in community next year. What’s the difference between audiences and communities?