By Clara Hudson
If you walk beyond the winding rows of color-coordinated clothing at H&M's SoHo store, you'll find an eclectic trove of what the retailer calls its "preloved" items, from a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt — featuring a cartoon parrot asking "where's the party?" — to a sleek Moschino top for $250.
The move to set up a kind of mini vintage store featuring a mishmash of garments is a stark contrast from the Swedish apparel giant's typical offerings. But it demonstrates the mounting interest the industry is showing in secondhand clothing, as fashion reckons with pressure to lower its environmental impact.
"It might be surprising to some customers to maybe come in for socks for the kids and stumble upon 'preloved,'" said Sofia Måhlén, team lead of circular business models at H&M. "I'd be very happy in my role if I can convert some shoppers to secondhand."
More big retailers have been integrating secondhand clothes into their stores, partly for sustainability, but also to garner attention. Banana Republic recently launched its own limited edition drops featuring pieces from the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Reformation, a top retailer with roots in upcycling vintage items, has expanded its "preloved" section, where it sells garb from brands including Prada and Bebe alongside its own styles. Reformation, which went public last week, says on its website that "being naked is the #1 most sustainable option. We're #2."
Adopting a secondhand section has a lot of selling points, and is much simpler than scaling a sustainable apparel line: The inventory can be low-cost or even free to collect; the brand gets to capitalize on a less environmentally harmful product; and the buzz around pop-ups, fueled by the lure of one-of-a-kind items, brings in new shoppers. H&M has worked with a small secondhand store, Awoke Vintage, for its preloved section in SoHo, but some big retailers are sourcing the preloved pieces themselves or have customers hand them in — sometimes for store credit.
H&M has set up about a dozen secondhand pop-ups in the past few years, adding preloved sections in Stockholm and Vienna in recent months. "The expansion has been quite steady," Måhlén said.
"A lot of this is about the customer, but it's also good business sense, " she said, adding the resale market is growing faster than conventional retail. H&M is banking on that with its investment in secondhand Swedish retailer Sellpy. Reselling items, including at Sellpy and at its other brands such as COS, made up about 0.8% of H&M's overall sales revenue in 2025, the company said.
The U.S. secondhand apparel market is expected to reach $78.8 billion by 2030, according to a report prepared by a data firm for ThredUp, an online resale business.
Meanwhile, the business model for making new clothes marketed as sustainable is struggling. Consumers criticized Everlane — a millennial favorite known for its muted hues, office-appropriate basics, and sustainable marketing — when it was recently bought by Chinese fast fashion company Shein. Allbirds, a brand known for making sustainable shoes, saw its stocks soar after it shuttered its apparel stores and transformed into an artificial intelligence business.
The most sustainable solution would be for retailers to slow down fashion cycles by designing products that are less trendy and more durable, said Vishal Agrawal, who researches sustainability in business at Georgetown University. But seeing the fashion world try out reuse programs is a promising sign, he said.
"I would much rather that retail companies do a lot more reuse" rather than prioritizing recycling textiles, he said. "At least it's better than a piece of clothing sitting in someone's closet and not being used at all."
Recycling textiles can be particularly tricky because a lot of clothing is made from a blend of materials from polyester — which is derived from oil — to cotton, rayon and nylon. Blends of different fabrics are harder to separate. The added complexity of trying to remove zippers and buttons is another hurdle.
There are new pressures on ultrafast fashion retailers to slow down their production. France recently passed legislation to fine apparel companies for churning out high volumes of cheap clothing. And California recently enacted a law requiring retailers to manage how clothing waste is disposed of, in a bid to keep clothes from further bloating landfills.
While the resale programs are mostly pilots for now, they could scale up if big retailers see them as a success, said Emma Håkansson, founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, which advocates for brands to better their environmental practices. But the secondhand programs won't solve the industry's sustainability predicament if it doesn't stop intentionally overproducing clothes with the goal of putting leftover stock on sale.
"We cannot maintain the business model of constant consumption and constant growth and recycle our way out of the problem — we have to produce and consume fewer things," she said.
Write to Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com