Monica Marriott-Mills loves wedding dresses and beautiful things in general. On TikTok and Instagram, the 30-year-old British influencer promotes fashion that is part of sustainable development, particularly second-hand. In an article in the “Guardian”, published at the beginning of the month, she is cited as an example of her generation, the millennials, who buy 50% of their Christmas gifts through recovery channels.
According to a report from resale app Vinted, cited by the British daily, more than half of people under 45 buy second-hand items once a month or more, compared to 43% of all consumers. . To designate these items, English speakers use a nice neologism, “preloved”, meaning “which has been loved before”.
Unimaginable yesterday, trendy today, purchasing a second-hand gift is motivated by economic, ethical and ecological considerations. The trend is tangible in several Western European countries, particularly in France. Published in 2023, the results of a survey by Ifop, an opinion polling company, “40% of French people have in fact already given someone a new object that they themselves had received as a gift, including 20% have done it several times.”
More generally, four out of ten respondents (43%) have already given a second-hand gift, including 27% several times. For 27% of those who have already given a second-hand gift, it was an object they owned and which they did not use or no longer use, but 41% bought the object before giving it. , 32% having practiced both options.
44% of those who have already given second-hand gifts have always told the person receiving the gift and 40% have said it sometimes, but not all the time. In total, 8 out of 10 people who gave a second-hand gift were transparent about the nature of the good offered. Likewise, 79% of people who gave this type of gift did not feel embarrassed or ashamed when giving the item in question.
Symmetrically, we observe the same proportion (82%) of recipients of this type of gift who were told that it was a second-hand gift. 81% of those surveyed believe that the person who gave this gift was not stingy, further evidence of the fact that this practice is now legitimate and accepted into practice.
