New figures from Barclays puts the UK second-hand fashion market at more than £7bn, with nearly one in four fashion transactions now involving resale. Vinted alone has over 17 million UK users, putting it just behind Primark and Next in terms of customer reach. Nearly 90% are under the age of 34. Research for Barclays in February found 38% of customers surveyed had purchased something from a resale platform in the past year.

And it isn’t only price that’s a factor. One in four consumers globally say they buy second‑hand goods specifically to reduce their environmental impact. For vintage and preloved sellers in the network, this is welcome news: the cultural shift is real and still accelerating across all categories – the report notes particular growth in kidswear and affordable luxury.

For brands making new pieces, the picture is more nuanced. Barclays data shows that when consumers cut discretionary spending, new clothing is consistently the first to go, with 55% of cost-conscious shoppers actively avoiding new purchases since 2023. That’s a headwind you’re battling against. Fear not – there’s a tailwind too, one that will hopefully carry all of us over this period economic turbulence. McKinsey’s State of Fashion 2026 notes that consumers are increasingly drawn to brands that offer emotional connection, which is precisely what distinguishes independent and sustainable fashion from the mass market.

The market is moving your way. Although things may feel difficult, hold onto that thought.

Link: https://home.barclays/insights/2026/03/The-Growth-Of-Resale-Is-Changing-Fashion-Retail/

 

Exhibition review: In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (until 16 August 2026)

The Ashmolean’s current exhibition takes on an ambitious subject: the role of plants in shaping human history. And it largely delivers, in every sense. The Hortus Siccus alone ­– dating to around 1660 and cataloguing nearly 2,800 dried plant specimens – is a doorstep of a volume. Elsewhere, familiar plants are photographed lifesize, their petals as big as your face. And for paintings and botanical drawings on a less grand scale, there are magnifying glasses in the corner of each room to help you admire all the small details. It’s a thoughtful touch which, alongside the sensory exhibits, exemplifies the attention the curators have brought to this vast topic.

The exhibition includes over 100 artworks and objects: Dutch oils, a watercolour by Ruskin, rare books including the Ashmolean’s treasured Plants of Greece, stunning nineteenth-century plant models from the Oxford University Biology Department and contemporary artwork and installations, tracing how the pursuit of plants transformed landscapes, economies and cultures from the earliest times to the present day. The range is impressive, and the curation moves through the timeline with a clear sense of argument rather than simply a series of beautiful things.

The work of early plant hunters captures the exhibition’s central tension: that same impulse to gather and classify the natural world sits only a short distance from the urge to exploit it. The show traces how that relationship shifted: through poppies (if you’ve ever wondered what an opium den smells like, one of the powerful sensory exhibits will enlighten you) and Hevea brasiliensis, the source of rubber latex and a plant whose story is inseparable from colonial extraction. In my book, The Nature of Fashion, I reveal the history of rubber plantations and their impact on Indigenous communities in the Amazon who have sustainably tapped the trees for millennia. While the exhibition doesn’t shy away from this history, I would have welcomed more wall text on the continuing ramifications of early plant exploitation, as well as more on the stories of individual plant hunters: where they travelled, what they brought back. An early map of the Virginia colony, for instance, missed a real opportunity – the failed attempts to grow commercial crops such as dye plants, the shattered illusions of early settlers, and the crop that eventually generated an income, if not the riches they had hoped for: hemp. For those of us who work with plant fibres and dyes, these are not historical footnotes. The communities growing, harvesting and processing these materials today are still living with the consequences of those early trade networks, and the exhibition could perhaps have made more of that.

Plants travelled along the same routes as people and goods, and the fibres, dyes and raw materials of our clothing are part of that same story, which is what makes this exhibition so relevant to anyone working in sustainable fashion. The contemporary works in the final gallery – several by women artists – bring the argument into the present, asking what has been lost in the breeding, commercialisation and homogenisation of the plant world. But they also point towards something more hopeful: that the impulse which drove those early plant hunters – curiosity, wonder, the desire to understand the natural world and our place in it – hasn’t disappeared. Artists, scientists, growers and makers are all finding new ways to work with and alongside plants.

Ambitious, visually rich and broader in scope than the floral title suggests, this is well worth a trip to Oxford. And while you’re there, Foraging Connections, a collaborative exhibition blending art, science, nature and community, is a free exhibition running until mid-June at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford.

Links: https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/in-bloom-how-plants-changed-our-world

https://modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/foraging-connections

 

Test your knowledge

This month we’ve looked at the triggers of overconsumption, narrative and what independent retail does differently. All of this circles back to the same question: how do we talk about what we do in a way that is both honest and clear – and actually means something to the people reading it? As well as our values, part of the reason people come to independents is to escape corporate marketing speak.

The UN Environment Programme and International Trade Centre have developed a free two-hour online course called the Green Marketing Challenge. It has been designed specifically for small and medium-sized businesses making sustainability claims. The challenge works through live examples of good and bad practice, with feedback that links directly to the ten principles of the UNEP-ITC Guidelines for Providing Product Sustainability Information. The aim is to help participants understand not just what makes a claim credible, but how to apply those standards to their own products and labels.

Greenwashing is increasingly scrutinised by our customers, by regulators and by the media. Knowing where your own language stands within the context of good practice is well worth the two hours. The course is free, self-paced and open until the end of 2026.

https://www.unssc.org/courses/green-marketing-challenge

 

For those with children, a project for the weekend?

Stop Ecocide have issued a call for children age 9-13 approx to submit drawings as part of a co-created  short environmental video. The project which will be a core part of a suite of educational materials designed to introduce young people to the concept of a new law to protect nature. Deadline: 31 May 2026.

More info: https://www.stopecocide.earth/change-the-rules