Street markets and the Exchange of Goods

Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket

There’s no doubt about it, there’s been a recurring vogue for nostalgia for a long time. Retro-styles have cropped up time and again and they often originate in second-hand markets. These markets offer the lower class an opportunity for the lower class to participate in fashion. Second-hand markets rely upon a surplus of goods that have retained their use value. This is a common occurrence in the current environment of bandwagon jumping. When a particular fashion is in, the others are discarded. Those who operate the second-hand markets snatch them up and wait for the items to resurface as stylish pieces.

This means of subversive consumerism, where the sellers evade the mainstream associations of mass produced items with inflated prices. What ends up happening is a battle for distinction between those who buy clothing from mainstream stores and those who buy from second-hand markets. Those who favour typical stores consider their tastes refined as they have proven their ability to afford stylish clothing. Those who favour markets consider themselves thrifty, authentic and self-innovators of style. The store and market could offer an identical selection but that divide seems constant. In between the two are stores that offer mainstream clothing for second-hand prices (the men’s section at H&M comes to mind). They try (successfully, in my opinion) to bridge the gap between the two. There are other stores that fill other parts of the spectrum as well. Thrift stores such as Liquidation World and Value Village fit somewhere near the street markets popularized in beatnik, hippy and punk culture, but are not nearly so anarchic.

Markets exist in many immigrant communities, offering traditional styles otherwise unavailable to the ethnic culture. Toronto’s Chinatown district has extensive markets selling goods in a way that typical North American society does not. The market means that the culture has the opportunity to retain some of their native culture and avoid indiscriminate homogeny among North American citizens. The ethnic market is demonstrative of a nation’s willingness to embrace other cultures and stimulate their sense of belonging through more traditional anti-corporate consumption.

There is more to buying and selling than the exchange of goods/currency. The culture of the rag market is often reliant on the desire for an alternative society. This led to a separate but connected subcultural network of semi-entrepreneurs. It is a rare chance for a member of a subculture to embrace a career within their subculture. Simultaneously, some were disenchanted with the idea, as selling products was a touch to similar to the consumer society the counter culture was supposed to be an alternative to. There was a fear among those at the heart of a subculture of ‘selling out’, where commodifying their counter culture was a fall from grace. Once again we see this notion of desperate avoidance of anything considered too mainstream...