Big business is getting in on the act as sales of ‘preloved’ garments boom. But can the trend curb our love for fast fashion? ‘A gradual revival of the secondhand trade has suddenly gathered pace in the last year.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty ‘A gradual revival of the secondhand trade has suddenly gathered pace in the last year.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Fri 7 May 2021 13.25 EDT Last modified on Sat 8 May 2021 00.20 EDT “Few articles change owners more frequently than clothes. They travel downwards from grade to grade in the social scale with remarkable regularity,” wrote the journalist Adolphe Smith in 1877 as he traced a garment’s journey: cleaned, repaired and resold repeatedly; eventually cut down into a smaller item; finally, when it was beyond all wearability, the fibres recycled into new fabric for the wealthier classes.