Digital platforms for circular shopping: slowing down and speeding up second-hand clothing consumption

This paper aims to empirically explore and conceptualise how circular fashion platforms enable and shape the practice of secondhand clothes shopping. Taking a shopping-as-practice approach and drawing on an ethnographically inspired study, this paper explores how a Swedish digital second-hand commerce platform enables different modes of shopping. The analysis shows that this platform and its socio-technical script encourage a type of fast second-hand clothes shopping, where the overconsumption of second-hand clothes is legitimised and framed as circular. The study shows that while it was possible to perform slow, sustainable second-hand clothes shopping on the platform, purchasing only a few items believed to be both wearable and durable, it required consumers to go against the socio-technical script, which promoted fast, frequent, and excessive shopping. Instead, following the script of the platform, most consumers in the study performed fast second-hand clothes shopping, frequently buying and selling large amounts of second-hand clothes. By using the platform in this way, these consumers could participate in fast fashion consumption and acquire affordable, trendy second-hand clothes, while simultaneously framing their shopping as circular and thus sustainable.