Tolerance.ca
Director / Editor: Victor Teboul, Ph.D.
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Independent and neutral with regard to all political and religious orientations, Tolerance.ca® aims to promote awareness of the major democratic principles on which tolerance is based.

Modern secondhand clothes are often considered ‘dirty’ but vintage garments aren’t – certain assumptions limit sustainable fashion

By Tetyana Solovey, PhD Candidate, Cultural Sociology, Manchester University
As a teenager in post-USSR Ukraine, I vividly remember visiting secondhand clothes shops. For the elderly, the biggest obstacle to accepting secondhand clothes wasn’t just the lingering smell of naphthalene – a potent chemical with a strong mothball odour used for sanitation which is hard to remove even by washing or dry cleaning.

Assumptions about the previous owner’s class — like the bourgeoisie, the so-called enemy of the working class in Soviet propaganda — and their skin colour were barriers too. But for me, these were exactly the reasons I adored this form of shopping. Through…The Conversation


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