Esther McCarthy: Why is every woman over 40 on Vinted?

Esther McCarthy. Picture: Emily Quinn

Come here to me, tell me this and tell me no more. What is going on with ladies over 40 and Vinted?

Everywhere I look, there’s another pre-menopausal woman frantically uploading last year’s 4th Arc fleeces and Adidas Sambas, shoving the kids off the family laptop to print postage labels. 

“Get away from the printers, kids. Mammy needs to ship her tuxedo blazer to Tullamore.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking it. I adore the whole pre-loved, reduce, reuse, recycle buzz. It’s good for the planet, great for your bank balance, and fantastic for clearing out some wardrobe space. Allegedly. 

Because while I’m fabulous at the buying part, I haven’t caught up with the selling off my own shite yet.

Apparently, it’s a little bit addictive, according to my fashionista network. Instead of snaps of friends in dressing rooms showing off a new outfit, asking for advice on whether to splurge or not, I’m getting WhatsApp pictures of the autumn/winter wardrobes that have been hauled out of the attic.

“Do you think I’d get €12 for these boots?” “Is this worth relisting?” “Do you think *insert husband’s name here* would notice if I sold the necklace he gave me for our anniversary? I never wear it.”

I’m telling ye, lads, something has shifted. I grew up with hand-me-downs. There was nothing wrong with it. But I remember a time when the mere whisper of second-hand clothing was a source of mortification. 

I’m still not over wearing my aunt’s Confirmation dress seven years after she did. 

I nearly would have kept my pioneer’s pledge in exchange for a new one from Roches. Nearly. 

Back in the day, people would sooner admit to liking Blur over Oasis than to wearing someone else’s coat. Hand-me-down was another way of saying hand-me-a-dollop-of-social-death, please. Now it’s a badge of honour.

I’ve seen people who would rather have eaten their own foot without salt than admit to wearing something old, switch to showing off their ‘vintage’ finds with pride. And I’m loving it. I’ve always been a charity shop fan, and I’ve got amazing finds on various preloved groups online.

I really have to get on there to sell some bits though — apparently, there’s proper kudos now in shifting a Penneys puffer and then reinvesting the proceeds in designer leggings for your daughter.

One friend of mine is a dinger at it. She never pays full price for branded sportswear. She smartly funds the kids’ designer habits via a flurry of postal runs and a kitchen overtaken by package tape. Win-win, she says. Far from it we were reared, says I.

A new outfit at Christmas for midnight Mass, and one at Easter, if you were lucky. Now my kids are casually looking at runners hitting the €200 mark without breaking a sweat. And it’s not even Jesus’s birthday, never mind theirs.

But I start to wonder why is it that women over 40, specifically, seem to have so eagerly jumped on the Depop and Vinted wanderly wagons? As I chat to friends, a pattern emerges.

To start with, we’re at the peak of wardrobe chaos. 

Let’s face it, after years of weddings and all the other milestones that make you think you need a brand new outfit, we’ve got a lot of excess in our wardrobes, dresses that fall into the ‘wear once’ category. 

Throw in a few impulse high street runs for a nice top to go with the jeans for a Friday night out, and panicked buys because our bodies keep changing, plus an unholy amount of fleeces because now our Friday nights are spent on the sidelines of pitches, and you have a glut of clothing.

We all know that delicious feeling of creating space in the wardrobe, and there is something cathartic about decluttering. So, if you can turn that chaos into cash, why not?

Second, the money-saving thrill is real, you guys. Especially when a cup of coffee and a pastry cost €3,000,000 at the moment.

Lastly, it’s nice to feel in control over SOMETHING. When our kids rule our timetables, and our hormones rule our moods, it’s good to think we’re in charge of our clothes at the very least.

Donating to charity is my
default way of doing clear-outs. But something happened walking home from the school drop-off the other day.

I walked through the grounds of Wilton Shopping Centre, and there was a pick-up truck full to the brim of charity bags. I asked the guy what the story was. He said this was his second load this morning — people are leaving bags full of clothes on the ground next to the charity bins. 

They can’t fit them in because they’re full, presumably because they’re not getting collected often enough, so they leave the bags next to them. Then it becomes dumping, and he brings them all to the landfill. I nearly started crying. “It’s a holy sin,” he said.

So, this weekend, I’ll either drop the clothes directly to the charity shops or I’ll create a Vinted account for myself.

I just have to figure out how to plug in the printer.