Markets as Performance: Secondhand Fashion and the Making of Value

• In Event: Knowledge, Expertise, and Economic Valuation

Abstract

Fashion has long been intertwined with urban life, yet cultural economy scholarship has largely centered elite production, overlooking everyday fashion performances as sites of market formation and value creation. This paper examines secondhand fashion (“thrifting”) as a vernacular cultural performance that generates circuits of value. Drawing on Alexander’s (2004, 2010) theories of cultural performance and iconicity, and Zelizer’s (2004, 2011) circuits of commerce, this paper argues that performance is not merely expressive but constitutive of markets: through sorting, curating, and narrating garments, participants produce identities and stabilize symbolic distinctions that organize exchange. The study draws on ethnography, interviews (n=45), surveys (n=305), and GIS mapping of secondhand store locations in New York City. The analysis shows that (1) thrifting practices function as identity-making performances; (2) ritualized shopping transforms store clusters into iconic cultural destinations; and (3) neighborhoods such as Bushwick, Greenpoint/Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side/East Village host distinct circuits of value, from dig-based thrift to curated vintage and luxury resale. By centering consumption as a performative mechanism of valuation, the paper demonstrates how vernacular fashion cultures actively constitute markets and reshape urban cultural economies.

Author

• Dicky Yangzom, New York University