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Secondhand is rarely second best. Sometimes it looks far better | Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion

Forget tatty cast-offs – the secondhand marketplace is now the first port of call for the savvy shopper

In a short space of time, the pre-loved fashion economy has gone from being niche – vintage stores full of antique silk dresses at the top end, jumble sale tat at the other, not much in the middle – to a viable way to source every part of your wardrobe. But the way fashion works means that, in many cases, those will have been inspired by (or, indeed, copied from) a rugby shirt that someone in the design team has brought in, perhaps from their own wardrobe, perhaps from their dad’s, perhaps from a charity shop. Pre-loved helps you make good choices because you get a more accurate sense of how jeans will fit when they’ve relaxed in the way that denim always does over the first few wears, and enables you to judge whether a bag will lose its appeal once it gets the corners knocked off a little.

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