The second hand is in fashion, also when it comes to dressing to say I do. This is clear from searches for wedding dresses on the popular second-hand buying and selling platform Wallapop, which have registered an increase of 96% in the last four years. There is growing interest in buying, but also in selling, especially after a breakup. After analyzing its sales offers, Wallapop has revealed that the peak in the sale of wedding dresses on the platform occurs in March, coinciding approximately six months after September, the month that records the highest number of divorces in Spain, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and the General Council of the Judiciary.
The Humana Fundación Pueblo para Pueblo stores, which sell donations of textiles and allocate the profits to cooperation programs and social aid projects, have also registered an increase in both interest in purchasing second-hand wedding dresses and an increase in the donations. For ten years, the organization has been carrying out an exclusive sales campaign for these items for a few days. In this decade, Humana has given a second life to more than 10,000 dresses throughout the country. The campaign has taken place these days, coinciding with what is known as the season of weddings, baptisms and communions, now in spring.
“Wedding dresses are the best example of the value of reuse because they are only used once and, if they are in good condition, they can perfectly have one or more lives,” says Rubén González, director of sales strategies at Humana. The bulk of the dresses sold by the organization come from donations, made in the same stores or in the containers that the entity has distributed throughout the country. González attributes the greater supply recorded in recent years to the greater number of divorces. Humana also receives wedding dresses from brands that dispose of stock and that, by law, can no longer destroy garments that they do not sell, a practice that used to be common in the fashion world.
Beyond wedding dresses, six out of ten Spaniards use second-hand textiles, according to a recent study by the Association for the Management of Textile Waste, initiated by the companies Decathlon, El Corte Inglés, H
Second-hand clothing is on track to account for 10% of global fashion sales by 2025, according to a study by online second-hand clothing store ThredUp. According to this same report, global sales of second-hand clothing are expected to grow three times faster on average than the overall clothing market by 2027, reaching a sales volume of $324 billion (301,000 million euros) in 2027, compared to 197 billion dollars (183 billion euros) in 2023.