I Took a Pill in a Thrift Shop

Thrift shops are having a minute. I know because I have one in my dining room.

More than a decade into my career as a starving ski instructor and writer, thrift shops are my therapists. Talking with the cashiers always helps lift my spirits and relieves my seasonal affect disorder. Since mountain towns attract well-heeled city folk who tend to be fickle about their outerwear, there are often great finds. This off season I collected an embroidered vintage Obermeyer ski jacket and a Smartwool baselayer with tags on it, among other finds.

Lately, I’ve noticed more and more people are thrifting with me.

“Thrifting isn’t just about unique pieces or saving money — It’s become a cultural movement, shaping how consumers shop and how brands connect with their audiences,” says Alma and Elma, a New York Marketing Agency known for its social media influence and clients like LVMH and Net-a-Porter.

The secondhand market produced around $23 billion in 2023 and is poised to grow seven times that. “Forecasts show the global secondhand apparel market could hit $350 billion by 2027,” Alma & Elma said in their blog, adding that thrift stores make up about 48 percent of the secondhand market in the US. Generation Z is the largest demographic for thrifters, with 83 percent open to secondhand clothes, vs. 33 percent of Millennials.

The thrift market is growing 11 percent faster than traditional resale, in part because the clothing industry is one of the biggest polluters. While fast fashion like Temu and Shein prioritize lower costs and higher units per minute, thrifting promotes a circular economy with a lower carbon footprint. Amra & Elma estimate 700 million pounds of clothing is diverted from landfills annually thanks to the secondhand market.

As more and more Americans medicate themselves for Attention Defecit Hyperactivity Disorder, depression and “Fuck it, let’s go shopping Syndrome,” I see thrift stores as an opportunity to heal what ails us.

For me, the trick is to thrift often and to thrift for others. I’ve always thrifted cool shit under the auspices of, this would be great for my…fill in the blank…friend or family member. Yes, I have the sticker, “It’s not hoarding if it’s cool shit.” Every six months or so, I put secondhand my scores like that pink floral Patagonia snowsuit, or that orange Stio flannel shirt in a box and ship them off to my hometown suburb in Western New York where cool shit like that is hard to thrift.

My addiction for mountain town thrifting began at Heirlooms in Basalt, Colorado and Gold Mine, a shop established in 1955 by the founders of the Community Library in Sun Valley. I always leave Browse n’ Buy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with smile knowing that my savings benefit St. John’s Church’s outreach programs. And thanks to places like Headwall Sports, I have been able to get, as well as give back to the secondhand market. I raised two Wyoming State Champion skie racers on Headwall.

This Thanksgiving, I moved my scores from my garage to my dining room and started dusting them off (a wet toothbrush dabbed in Barkeepers Friend scrub works wonders) to sell then at my pop-up sale. Ever since, I have been barraged by friends with articles from The New York Times and Vogue like “How Gen Z is shopping.” I stopped counting after seeing that 8 vintage and thrift shops made it into the top “50 Best Clothing Stores in America.”

The other thing I love about thrift stores is their monikers. The Church Mouse in Palm Beach, FL, for instance is known for “ Rich people’s clothes at bargain prices.”

My thrift shop’s name — Score! Upcycled Digs for Mountain Town Life–is more literal and meant to uplift. It will debut its first 100 scores at a pop-up sale at The Old Wilson Schoolhouse in Wilson, Wyoming this Sunday, December 7 from 1–4pm. Wilson, outside of Jackson Hole, WY, is one of the richest zip codes in America. It also has the largest income inequality in the nation, a fact popularized in the book “Billionaire Wilderness: The ultra wealthy and the remaking of the American West.”

So far, I have attracted a hair sparkler and a vintage ski shop partner called Twice is Nice to join me. Robin Hood, one of the OG thrifters, stole from the rich to give to the poor with his Merry Men. But I prefer to look at Score! through the lense of a Leonard Cohen song. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”