St. Petersburg, Florida — Brooklyn Karasack loves to thrift and sew. She thrifts in her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, and then uses her grandmother’s sewing machine to whip up her fantastical creations.
“This is probably $3 or something like that,” Karasack told CBS News, referring to an old pillowcase she turned into a tote bag as an example of her work.
Her creativity has paid off. The 28-year-old, who works as an auditor during the day, has more than 800,000 online followers, who watch her take her thrift store finds on her social accounts and turn the old items into new ideas.
Karasack said she got into thrifting and sewing after deciding to stop buying fast fashion. Fast fashion, a term for low-priced, trendy clothes made by companies like H&M, Forever 21 and others, has become a big contributor to textile waste, producing 92 million tons a year, according to Global Fashion Agenda’s Pulse of the Fashion Industry report. A piece of clothing is worn only seven to ten times, on average, before being thrown out, according to Uniform Market.
She said that after she started thrifting, she hasn’t “bought anything fast fashion.” Karasack isn’t alone in turning toward thrifting.
With a trade war underway, Americans worried about costs have flocked to the used clothing market. Thrifting is an easy way to avoid tariffs, with prices generally 50% to 75% off of retail. The secondhand market is expected to more than double by 2028, growing 6.4 times faster than the broader retail sector, according to a 2024 resale report from Thredup, an online thrift store.
Small businesses are also jumping on the trend — Sew Pinellas offers beginner sewing classes for DIYers of all ages. They’ve been full since they began last year.
Sewing jumps in popularity during economic slowdowns, data from Statista shows that 26% of 18- to 29-year-olds engage in some form of sewing activity.
Kristen Hester, who manages Out Of The Closet, a thrift store with 24 locations, says customers now expect thrift stores to offer more. Customers used to think of thrifting happening in a charity shop where everything is thrown around and they had to dig through dirty bins.
Hester grew up thrifting with her mom and likens it to a treasure hunt, but notes back then it wasn’t as popular as it is today.
“Thrift stores had stuff that the regular retail stores just didn’t have,” Hester said. “…You think of a small little charity shop, where maybe everything is thrown around; you have to dig through dirty bins.”
The 38-year-old says that her store is “more of a curated, boutique experience.”
Out of The Closet, like many secondhand shops, is mission-driven. When you shop or donate at Out of the Closet, 96 cents of every dollar made goes to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s HIV prevention and treatment services, the shop said.
She adds, “It really has created this really cool kind of niche community where everybody is just so accepting. Everybody’s in the same mindset. Everyone is happy to be there.”
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