I’d guess it’s the new tariffs making the previously very cheap purchases no longer that cheap

Compared to Temu, I guess you could call Vinted - or pretty much any shop - fancy.

Vintage clothing can certainly be in fashion, has been in the past in not-so-recent years in the US.

thinks

I’d guess that one indicator as to whether it’s fashion or economics driving it might be whether the clothing is visibly and obviously from an earlier period, probably many years earlier (like…the wearer wants to highlight that they are wearing vintage clothing) or whether people are mostly buying stuff that is pretty recent and looks similar to current stuff (to make it non-obvious).

EDIT: I was gonna guess that it might be EU de minimis changes. The US did so as well, and I understand that it had a similar effect on Temu. Reading the article, it does reference them before talking about used stuff.

With de minimis exemptions, a foreign retailer that sells and ships directly low-value packages can avoid tariffs. The idea behind the exemption is that you don’t want to have very high transaction costs. But…it also disadvantages the pair of traditional bulk importers and domestic retailers, who do have to pay tariffs.

If it is de minimis ending, I’d expect that it is the economic side driving it, but that it wouldn’t indicate a recession, as it’s indicating a reduction in supply of new goods at a given price, not demand.

Some second hand is cheaper but you also get a lot of people that want to maximise their earnings on selling their stuff, and often I see prices at above 90% of the new price.

It’s more popular to buy things second hand because of lower climate impact. And then Temu (and other non-EU sellers) are hit with high import fees that make all the small shipments not worth it.

You should read the article, it’s not that long.