Storm

It’s hard to love our clothes and keep wearing them for a longer period of time, when we are faced with a tempting array of newness on offer in the shops. But before you head out into the store looking for new trends, spare a thought for the impact of fast fashion on the environment. Fast fashion focuses on speed and low costs in order to deliver frequent new. This is bad for the environment, as pressure to reduce cost and the time it takes to get a product from design to shop floor means that environmental corners are more likely to be cut. Criticisms of fast fashion include its negative environmental impact, water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste. Furthermore, the fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions, is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply, and pollutes the oceans with microplastics. So how can we, as GSS students, be a part of solving this problem? The answer is: thrifting. Turns out that Utrecht has a lot of pearls when it comes to thrift shops. To begin with, storm has its own thrift shop, called thrift storm. It is an online platform where you can sell , buy or give old things to other Stormers. It is not only about clothes, but also things like (study)books, plants and household items.

Episode is by far my favorite vintage shop. They mainly sell clothes. The store in Utrecht is huge and has two floors with a large product range, from beautiful dresses to Levi’s jeans. Episode isn’t cheap, but you usually get products of good quality in return. (location : Oudegracht 206). The third thrift shop I like is Sussies Vintage. It is smaller than Episode, but they also have lots of good quality clothes. The beautiful cowboy boots, flannels and jackets really stood out for me. (location : Voorstraat 50). If you are looking for a cool varsity jacket, you should really visit Vintage Island. It is a pricy vintages store, but they do have a lot of trendy clothes. If you don’t want to leave your house due to Covid, you can also buy their clothes online (https://vintageislandonline.com/). However, if you want to take a break from all the studying, you can also visit the store (location : Zadelstraat 39). Thrift shops ‘van stitching De Arm’ are also one of my favorites. They have six thrift shops in Utrecht (most of them at the ‘oudegracht’). Besides these, they also have a very big thrift department store in Hoograven. There is a lot of variation in these thrift shops. They sell clothes, furniture, books, bikes and a lot more. 

I summed up my favorites, but there are way more thrift shops in Utrecht! Hopefully I inspired you to go thrifting, so we can all contribute to sustainable fashion.