Stroll through the weekend flea market at Vienna's Naschmarkt and you will notice a scene that has shifted in recent years: among the stalls of old crockery and vinyl records stand strikingly large numbers of young people hunting specifically for clothes. What was once a stopgap or a niche pursuit has become a market in its own right. Used fashion is being sold, swapped and passed on – at the market stall, in the charity shop and, above all, on the phone. Secondhand trade has carved out a firm place in Austria, driven by price awareness, environmental concerns and the sheer convenience of an app that turns the living room into a marketplace.

From market stall to charity shop

Austria's secondhand market is not new; it has simply become more visible. Flea markets have been part of the streetscape in Vienna, Graz, Linz and Salzburg for decades, and charitable organisations run a dense network of shops. Caritas operates numerous shops and sorting facilities across the country under the name carla, while Volkshilfe and the Red Cross maintain their own collection and sales structures. These operations serve a dual purpose: they fund social projects and employ people who struggle to gain a foothold in the regular labour market, and they keep tonnes of textiles in circulation that would otherwise be thrown away.

The quantities are considerable. According to the Umweltbundesamt, Austria's federal environment agency, the country generates on average several kilograms of used textiles per person per year, a substantial share of which ends up in the clothing banks that many of these organisations operate. Not everything dropped in, however, is wearable: a growing proportion is so worn out, or of such poor quality to begin with, that it is no longer fit for resale and can at best be repurposed as cleaning rags or insulation material. The sorting facilities therefore separate meticulously between what goes back on sale, what gets exported and what ends up as residual waste.

Vinted and willhaben are shifting the market

The biggest boost to the used-goods market came from platforms. willhaben has long been Austria's go-to site for classified ads of every kind, clothing included, and reaches a broad public across all age groups. But the fashion secondhand market in the narrower sense has been shaped by the app Vinted, which originated in Lithuania and has grown rapidly in the German-speaking world. Its principle is simple: private individuals photograph a garment, set a price, and the platform handles payment and shipping. Buyers and sellers no longer need to go anywhere – the entire transaction happens digitally.

This shift has changed the character of secondhand shopping. Instead of browsing and stumbling upon finds, people search deliberately by brand, size and colour. That makes the market more accessible, especially for younger consumers, and it professionalises it. Some sellers effectively run small online shops, buying cheaply and reselling. The line between clearing out one's own wardrobe and commercial trading is blurring – a point that is also attracting growing attention from tax and legal authorities once decluttering turns into a regular business.

Why buying used makes environmental sense

The environmental benefit of secondhand fashion hinges directly on how much new clothing it prevents from being produced. Textile manufacturing is resource-intensive: cotton farming consumes large amounts of water, synthetic fibres are based on crude oil, and dyeing and finishing pollute waterways. Environmental organisations such as Greenpeace have long pointed out that the fashion industry ranks among the highest-emitting sectors and that a growing share of the clothing produced is worn only briefly or not at all.

The term fast fashion describes exactly this model: very cheap clothing, released in rapid succession of new collections, with a short lifespan. Greenpeace and others argue that the low prices fail to reflect the ecological and social costs. Every garment that gets a second or third life potentially replaces a newly produced one – that is the real lever. But only if the used purchase genuinely takes the place of a new one. Anyone who consumes more simply because used goods are so cheap tips the balance the other way. Secondhand delivers its advantage above all when it dampens the overall volume of consumption rather than merely adding to it.

The problem with textile waste

At the end of the chain lies a problem that the boom in cheap clothing has made worse. A substantial share of the textiles collected through banks and shops is exported abroad, much of it to Eastern Europe and Africa. For a long time this was regarded as sensible reuse. Today it is clear that the volumes and declining quality are overwhelming the receiving markets: whatever cannot be sold ends up in landfill there or is burned. Investigations by environmental organisations and reports from the Umweltbundesamt indicate that the sheer mass of low-grade fast fashion is pushing the collection system to its limits.

The European Union has responded. Since 2025, member states, Austria included, have been obliged to collect used textiles separately. The aim is to sort more material deliberately and keep it in circulation instead of letting it vanish into residual waste. In parallel, the EU is working on extended producer responsibility rules that would make fashion companies bear a larger share of disposal costs. Whether these rules actually shrink the textile mountain depends on how well collection, sorting and reuse mesh together – and on whether less, but more durable, clothing gets produced.

What to look for when buying

Buying used means looking more closely, because there is no warranty and often no returns. At the market stall or in a carla shop you can inspect clothing directly; online, you rely on photos and descriptions. A few points help avoid bad buys:

  • Check the material and workmanship: natural fibres and solid seams last longer than thin blended fabrics; pilling, stretched-out cuffs and threadbare patches are warning signs.
  • Pay attention to brand and actual measurements: dress sizes vary widely, and with older or international items in particular, it pays to look for measurements given to the centimetre.

Beyond that: on online platforms, reviews from other buyers offer a clue to a seller's reliability, and for higher-priced branded pieces, buyer protection handled through the platform guards against total loss. Anyone seeking quality rather than a pile of bargains comes out ahead in the long run – a well-made used garment often far outlasts a cheap new one.

What remains

Secondhand fashion in Austria has evolved from a charitable sideline into a mainstream way of shopping, carried by flea markets, a dense network of social-enterprise shops and platforms such as willhaben and Vinted. The environmental gain is real, but it comes with one condition: it materialises where used clothing replaces new clothing rather than being bought on top of it. At the same time, the growing pile of textile waste makes clear that reuse alone will not solve the problem as long as ever more short-lived garments are churned out at the other end of the market. For consumers, buying used remains one of the most practical ways to save both resources and money in the wardrobe – most effective of all when it goes hand in hand with a more conscious eye on quantity.