In a hẻm, clothing sprawled out on platforms lined with the plastic sacks the clothing came in, overspilling onto the tarmac road. This was just a glimpse of the thrifting scene in Vietnam.
Since the late 1980s, the secondhand apparel industry has been present and thriving in Vietnam, but what might have once been thought of as inferior or a result of poverty has now been “rebranded” to being trendy, environmentally conscious, and stylish. It is no longer “you thrift! (derogatory),” but “oh my gosh, you thrift! (so cool).”
Often called “đồ SIDA,” secondhand clothing in Vietnam traces back to postwar times, specifically to an aid program from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) that provided Vietnam with large packages of lightly used clothing from across Europe. This acronym was unfortunately shared with SIDA (Syndrome d'immunodéficience acquise), the French term for AIDS, which was widely used across Vietnam; so for years, there was a stigma associated with wearing secondhand items in Vietnamese culture.
The thrifting landscape has since evolved: the aid program ran its course, yet the demand for secondhand deals is still alive and well, so markets focusing on secondhand items now get their packages from wholesale warehouses from the US, Japan, Korea, China, Australia, and surrounding Southeast Asian countries. Globally, the secondhand apparel market will reach US$350 billion by 2028, up from US$197 billion in 2023 and US$141 billion in 2021, growing three-fold faster than the overall global apparel market.
On a cloudy Saturday morning, I decided to blow off some steam by embarking on a thrift-athon, and I would challenge myself this time, going for the casual vibes of Hoàng Hoa Thám Market instead of neatly arranged thrift stores over the city. Long reigning as one of the best thrifting destinations in the city, Hoàng Hoa Thám Market is located at 19 Hoàng Hoa Thám Street in Saigon's Tân Bình District. Its layout was not intuitive. Arriving at the scene, I would have been lost, had I not done prior research.
Mainly occupying the market were new merchandise, bootleg designer items, food, and flowers — characteristic of Saigon markets. With plain names like “Siêu Thị Đồ Si” or not named at all, the clothing-focused thrift stores I was interested in were scattered throughout the side of the road opposite to the market’s gate, and in a hẻm cutting horizontally behind the market. Used footwear, fabrics, undergarments, jewelry, and accessories vendors on that loosely L-shaped path might also intrigue. Go on weekends and Mondays for merchandise at a higher price for an overall better quality, or Thursdays and Fridays for lower-priced steals with less of a quality guarantee.
The nonchalantly displayed bulk and layout of clothing is reminiscent of Goodwill Outlet Stores, colloquially known as Goodwill Bins, an initiative more occupied with volume than quality from Goodwill, the famous American nonprofit. A notable difference between the two thrift destinations, though, lies in sourcing: all Goodwill items on sale are donations from individuals, and all Hoàng Hoa Thám items are from overseas packages.
Having sufficiently hyped myself up for the ordeal, I dove right into one of the unnamed stores. Leaving my shoes out front, as is customary, I climbed and waded through the endless array of clothing before settling atop a satisfactory mound. In the organized chaos, I made out that the mounds were separated into items: denim, tank tops, blouses, knits, crochets, dresses, and so on and so forth. Everywhere, fellow shoppers sat criss-cross applesauce, making themselves so comfortable that it was hard to tell them apart from shopkeepers. It was also hard not to think of past shoppers who had sat or stepped on the pieces of clothing I was now so happily sifting through. Yet despite the chaotic sensory experience, I was able to find beautiful, good quality Y2K-adjacent tank tops, office-siren-core button-ups, and vintage watches. Intricately patterned dresses three sizes too big for me were calling my name, begging to be DIY-ed and altered anew. Be sure to bring a mask in preparation for lint, dust, and sand.
Across from the store I was haunting was another row of promising shopfronts. There seemed to be a well-functioning, symbiotic collaboration between all stores in the narrow hẻm, as they allowed me to criss-cross shops between their offerings. Notably, I was not scolded or given a stare-down for taking a look at something and not getting it.
Suddenly, rain began to pour in true Saigon fashion: a heavy, consistent shower came after no build-up, and displayed no signs of decline. I was stuck, accompanied by fellow thrifters from different walks of life. To my right was a family of four, running amok, searching for new seasonal outfits. They looked and pondered based on need, searching for a windbreaker for the dad as his last one had ceased to be usable, and jeans for the children as they had grown out of their previous pairs. To my left, a girl looking to be in her twenties, wearing a spaghetti strap dress over baggy capri pants, went through a gargantuan mound with precision and decisiveness that betrayed her pro status. With a mind for what was on trend, her eyes and hands worked mechanically, scanning for satisfactory colors, shapes, and fabrics. She then pulled with slick force and threw her spoils into an already-stuffed basket. She would probably go on to resell these in her quaint vintage store elsewhere in town or on online platforms such as Instagram, Ebay, Poshmark, or Depop. Such behavior reflected the recent spike in the thrifted apparel resale industry. As the rain stormed on, I started worrying for my Adidas Gazelles that I had taken off, presumably soaked by now. Rookie mistake. The experienced shoppers were decked out in plastic flip-flops and slippers.
Many people derive a real “high” from thrifting. The wicked satisfaction, pride, and obsession with getting a better steal than the next person contributes to the practice being as much a hobby as a necessity. Add this adrenaline rush to the poor state of the economy and the rising awareness of the fashion industry’s negative impact on the environment, and you get the popularization of thrifting. However, amped by social media, thrifting has in recent years misguidedly become another tool to satiate insanely rapid trend cycles that are just as harmful to the environment as retail.
Was it right for me to indulge in the fashion industry, a truly gnarly beast, simply to “blow off steam?” Approximately half of Goodwill donations not up to their standards of salability end up in charity programs, get sent to US landfills, or get sold to wholesale warehouses. Hoàng Hoa Thám gets their stock from such warehouses. The market restocks almost every single week. With hundreds of kilograms of clothing on display, it's hard to imagine that a store could sell all of it in one week.
Demand begets supply, such is one of the most fundamental lessons of any business. Today I demanded an activity for entertainment, a remedy to life’s stressors, and a method of keeping on trend and establishing myself as a stylish individual. The backends of the fashion industry answered. And I am happy with my finds as I now soak them in a detergent bath, not wanting to risk washing them with my other clothes yet. And I am deleting all my to-buy lists, knowing that I will not be purchasing another piece of clothing, retail or thrift, until something in my closet breaks. As a consumer, the only way to halt consumption is to choose carefully, wear carefully, line dry as opposed to machine dry, repair, recycle, be mindful of how you dispose of clothing and the options you have, and ask yourself what a new item will be for.
