How to shop, judge and care for secondhand clothing

A banner of four photographs: a red dress on a tailor’s dummy, rails of secondhand clothing in a shop, a tailors’ mannequin with a measuring tape and a flat lay of a tape, thread and scissors

Thrift File writes about secondhand and vintage clothing: how to shop thrift stores with a plan, how to tell a genuinely old garment from a recent one, how to judge condition before you pay, and how to care for, repair and resell what you find.

Clothing made decades ago was cut to different measurements, from different fabrics, with different standards of finish. That is what makes secondhand interesting, and it is also what makes it confusing. Our guides stick to the parts you can check yourself: labels, seams, fibre content, measurements and construction.

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