Part One: As a Buyer

Poshmark is a site where you can buy and sell new and used, name brand clothing, at a discount. I found it because I partner, Bret, liked to use it to buy shoes he wasn’t sure about buying new (much less for retail prices).

I enjoy thrifting, and when I learned that many of these women are searching the stores, cleaning, mending, and curating the clothes, I realized I could still pay discount prices, for nice clothing, with less work than I would have to do at my own thrift store, with more of a guarantee of finding exactly what I was looking for.

All the joy on online shopping, but less prices. Better yet, with the larger closets of sellers who are using Poshmark to work from home full time, I have many choices of bundling items from one closet and saving on shopping. That’s right, multiple items, and one shipping cost.

Plus, Poshmark recommends seller’s package their clothing in cute ways, or at very least neatly, in some paper, with a nice note. I cannot stress enough how nice it is to get a item you have ordered and feeling like someone cared enough to package it, and make you feel valued.

It’s like a little present, and sure you pay for it, but you also helped a small business.

Frequently, with Poshmark, many sellers will even include a free gift, which some boutiques do, but many don’t. These little trinkets are normally small, a necklace, pair of earrings, headband, hair ties…I even received some makeup remover once. These little perks are not a guaranteed part of shopping Poshmark, but are a nice benefit to it.

I love using getting a nice package from a seller on Poshmark with my items packaged neatly in cute tissue paper, wrapped in ribbon, with a nice thank you card and a few cute stickers.

I love watching people slowly build a business and a brand. Poshmark Sellers are making livings for themselves selling their own items as well as sourced items, and are creating real incomes for themselves. They develop a brand, curate a closet style, and invest in themselves as business owners. Poshmark lets me watch everyday people build small little empires for themselves.

Finally, let’s get real and talk about our planet, and the true cost of “looking trendy” all the time.

The trend of fast fashion, or wearing the newest hottest thing, is rapidly adding to the killing our planet. Fast fashion is defined as inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends. Making tons of cheap clothing to accommodate ever changing trends, contributes to the waste going on in our planet. When cheap clothing is purchased and worn a hand full times before it breaks or falls out of fashion, it is discarded. Even when the garments aren’t tossed in the trash, they are rarely able to be worn much more than a few times anyway.

These items of clothing may provide a cute outfit for that date, party, or Instagram post, but they also take up space in our landfills and oceans, and they leach the toxic chemicals from the cheap fabrics into the earth, air, and water, we all live with, every day.

Clothing is nice and all, but I don’t want to live in a world where the not natural materials have broken down into the atmosphere, and I don’t want to feel like we are all drowning in the trash we have created, which of course happens every single time we turn over from yet another fashion trend.

When you buy quality materials, quality clothing, take care of them, mend them, wear them, pass them on to others via gift, hand me down, or resale, the item gets another life, where the user may use it, mend it, take good care of quality clothing, for a few seasons, at the very least, we have avoided a large amount of waste polluting our planet.

And that look is way cooler than any new outfit fast fashion has given you.

That great deal on the hot new fashion item may be cheap for you, but it has a staggering expense for the rest of the planet. Please note, I am only discussing the various problems with the clothing pollution alone, not the factories, and in some cases, the human and child slavery that goes into making these fashionable knock offs for cheap.

The price is always bigger than it look when you buy cheap crap.

When you buy a super trendy garment, it is not made with the same fabrics, by the same makers, in the same places.

These places are frequently using underpaid or forced labor, in countries that do not have laws against it, and this is wear more of the discount comes in.

If you want to have quality clothing that is in fashion well made, and doesn’t have a devastating impact on both the environment and fellow humans.

You can rest easy, knowing you not only helped avoid a massive problem, but you are also now getting a big name brand item, while still supporting a small business.

How often can someone buy some big name brand and still know, without a doubt, that they directly helped a small business?

Every seller on Poshmark has the opportunity to turn selling the clothing from their closets into a small business, and when you shop Poshmark, you encourage that business.

I like to shop local, or shop small, to make sure I know exactly where my dollars go. Sure, using Poshmark, 20% does go to Poshmark, to insure all packages and keep Poshmark fair and most important, easy, but I know that company, and it isn’t encouraging destruction of our planet, or slavery, or big corporations. They are actively working against these things, so for these reasons, I love to shop Poshmark.

Before, I was stuck digging through thrift stores myself to find the things I wanted at a discount, to avoid fast fashion, to get a great item at a price I could afford. Now, I can shop from the peace of my own home, like everyone else, and the packages I get come in much better condition than balled up in a plastic bag (which ends up in an ocean).

If you haven’t tried Poshmark, feel free to download it. Feel free to download and shop any of the amazing closet’s on Poshmark, if you use our closet name, you get a discount, and I do too, but don’t feel obligated, get to shopping!! End fast fashion and paying full price.

We use our page to help pay for our art, and I will be doing a Part Two for Poshmark about why we sell. Make sure you check back to get some fun information on how Poshmark rocks.

❤

Abbi

Feel free to follow me on all the social medias: @AbbiGrasso on Twitter, Instagram, Speekin’, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WordPress, Medium, YouTube, WeedTV, and any place else I have forgotten.

P.S.- This post is dedicated to Amber, one of my best friends, who texted me about the blog, and reminded me that I have to power through and get one of the posts up. Stay tuned for a mushy post about friendship, because damn, Amber is the best.