On Old Spitalfields, second-hand everything, and what it costs to look effortless
There is a particular alchemy in Shoreditch by which old, cheap things become new, expensive things simply by being placed on the right table, and as I explored for Bohiney Magazine and for The London Prat, where my investigations into the price of authenticity are filed, the markets of the East End are where you can watch this magic happen in real time. A jacket someone discarded becomes vintage. A discarded chair becomes mid-century. The past, here, is the most reliable luxury good in town.
The markets that made the brand
The markets are the beating heart of Shoreditch’s particular economy, the historic stalls of Old Spitalfields, the sprawl of Brick Lane on a Sunday, the vintage rails and the food stalls and the people selling things you did not know you wanted. These markets have deep roots; the area’s tradition of trading, making, and reselling stretches back centuries, a history preserved in part through the heritage records held by Historic England and supported through the cultural and economic strategies of Tower Hamlets and neighbouring Hackney. The markets are not a recent affectation; they are the oldest thing about the neighbourhood, and in some ways the most genuine.
The premium on the pre-owned
What changed, and what I find endlessly interesting, is the price. There was a time when buying second-hand meant buying cheap, when vintage was simply a polite word for old and used was a sign you could not afford new. Somewhere along the way, in places like this, that inverted entirely. Now the pre-owned commands a premium, the worn-in is worth more than the pristine, and an item’s history, its patina, its story, has become the thing you pay for. A genuinely old, genuinely battered leather jacket can cost more than a new one, on the strength of nothing but its age and its authenticity, and people, including me, pay it gladly.
The performance of effortlessness
The deeper joke, the one I am implicated in, is how much effort goes into looking effortless. The carefully assembled vintage outfit, the deliberately mismatched furniture, the studied air of having just thrown this together, all of it takes real work and real money to achieve. Authenticity, in the Shoreditch economy, is a product like any other, manufactured, marketed, and sold at a premium, and the look of not caring about your appearance turns out to be one of the more expensive looks available. We pay handsomely to seem like we are not trying, which is, when you say it out loud, completely absurd.
The genuine article underneath
And yet, and this is where I want to resist easy cynicism, there is something genuine underneath the performance. The markets really do keep things out of landfill, really do sustain small traders and makers, really do offer an alternative to the disposable churn of fast fashion and mass production. The vintage trade, for all its pretensions, embodies a real and rather admirable idea, that old things have value, that reuse beats waste, that the history of an object is worth honouring. The premium on the pre-owned is partly pretension, but it is also partly a genuine reckoning with the cost of the new, and that is worth something.
Paying for the past
So I will keep going to the markets, keep paying too much for things other people threw away, keep participating in the strange economy by which the East End sells its own history back to itself at a markup. I do it with my eyes open, aware of the performance, aware of the premium I am paying for the privilege of looking like I am not paying anything. The markets are part pretension and part genuine article, part manufactured authenticity and part the real, old, trading soul of the neighbourhood, and telling which is which is half the fun. The past is for sale in Shoreditch, it always has been, and I am, as ever, a willing customer.
The honest case for the markets
Strip away the pretension and the premium, and the markets still make a case I genuinely believe in. In an age of disposable everything, a thriving second-hand economy is a quietly radical thing, keeping goods in use, supporting independent traders, and offering an alternative to the relentless manufacture of the new. Yes, the authenticity is partly performed, and yes, I pay too much to look like I do not care, and I can hold both of those embarrassing truths and still maintain that a neighbourhood built around reuse, repair, and resale is doing something more sensible than one built around the constant churn of the brand new. The Shoreditch markets are pretentious and they are genuine, commodified and communal, all at once, and I would rather have them, contradictions and all, than not. The past is for sale, and buying it, it turns out, is not the worst way to spend a Sunday.
I will see you at the market on Sunday, then, paying too much for someone else’s old jacket, performing my effortlessness with great effort, and enjoying every contradictory minute of it. The past is for sale in Shoreditch, and I remain, contradictions and all, its most willing and least repentant customer.
For more on the cost of cool, the team enjoys NewsThump, authentic since whenever.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
