Longread #287 -- Used Clothes -- 4/2/13

Last night, the Seattle Mariners hosted an event that included printing approximately ten to fifteen thousand t-shirts. It's common to find these shirts -- often still unworn -- when browsing the aisles of the local thrift shop. As someone who commonly donates old or unwanted clothes to thrift stores, I typically assumed that these clothes were predominately being sold by the thrift shop itself. Instead, it turns out, most of these used clothes wind up being re-sold over and over until they are worn by the poor in Africa. While I realized that this type of reselling occurred, I had no sense of its scope until reading this article.

"How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back" by George Packer
Published in the New York Times, March 31, 2002

Eric