What changed was the label, not the behaviour. Buying used clothes and furniture was for a long time a last resort with a stigma attached; the vintage expert Virginia Chamlee, author of Big Thrift Energy, argues that the pandemic plus TikTok turned it into content: people started talking about thrifting in public, at volume, as something worth showing off. The vocabulary did much of the work: calling an item vintage, she notes, sounds cooler than calling it secondhand or retro, and the same object moves from cast-off to find. That rebranding is why the practice now carries two quite different motives at once. Younger millennials and Gen Z shoppers talk about sustainability and durability, wanting something that will last; a different set of buyers is hunting designer furniture and high-end pieces at a discount, which is bargain-hunting rather than restraint. Neither group is looking for the cheapest possible object. That mix explains both the 53% who say they want to buy more secondhand and the steep age gradient underneath it, from 64% of under-35s down to 38% of over-65s. That is the generation for whom the stigma was never rebranded away.