Tik Tok has recently increased the community of sustainable shoppers and has enabled people to find ways to upcycle and sell clothes they no longer want or need. Although it has caused a positive outlook, they are still some positive and negatives of this boost.
Thrifting
Growing up my mom would thrift as a necessity: to not spend much money. She was able to find good items for a good price. Â We had stopped thrifting, because there was a negative stigma behind it, and we recently decided to go back and thrift again. Since I had gotten a job at Goodwill: we would take advantage of my discount from time to time. I had noticed a few things while my time working at Goodwill: that would go under the Con side of sustainable fashion: their advocacy of being sustainable only goes so far as well as the number of resellers that take over the location and constantly follow the workers who are putting merchandise out on the floor. The concept of thrifting is very positive, but with the increase of TIk Tok fame everything has become all about reselling and buying things just because you want them and not out of necessity. As well as people tend to resell everything on Depop, Mercari, or Poshmark and would spike the price of the item and would list it at as something else. As well as fast fashion has taken over all thrift stores due to so many people constantly buying from Shein, and Romwe and thrift stores started to price items higher due to the demand that was sparked during the fame of thrifting.
Upcycling
I once saw a segment on upcycling on Disney and It always made me curious about trying to fix up the clothes I no longer wear as much. Tik Tok has also fed into creators who are big on upcycling and will showcase their work and are able to resell those pieces that they have created as well as show people how to create new ideas with what they might have. Upcycling is a great concept for sustainable fashion since you do not have to buy new clothes or if you do you can always thrift similar pieces and create something you would want to wear. The only difficult parts would be messing up and not liking the outcome and donating it back to a thrift store that would also not want those pieces that end up going to waste.
Although I did not mention many concepts of sustainable fashion the main ways to become a sustainable fashionista would be to thrift, share, and upcycle your clothes since you would stop being a fast fashion consumer as well as you will be able to create pieces that are unique.