Nowadays it is not a rarity to see people walking downtown Sofia dressed in second-hand clothes. The number of second-hand shops in Bulgaria has multiplied in the recent years. Female clients usually flood those shops during their lunch break and search carefully for their new treasure. They rarely leave those shops without buying a pair of original jeans or a posh blouse worth EUR 5 each. Business with second-hand clothes and shoes in Bulgaria has been prospering a lot and the second-hand market has become very dense. For instance, some shops situated downtown Sofia offer only second-hand sports clothes and equipment. In fact, these shops nestled in the narrow city streets resemble exquisite boutiques. Each one is furnished with a lot of imagination and love towards the details and the girls selling that second-hand produce love their job. Sometimes, when people enter such shops for the first time, they often do not realize that second-hand clothes are on sale there. Clients are not worried about the origin of the products and many actresses and TV hosts can be seen purchasing their extravagant dressing in small shops near Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church.

“Everyone likes to look the one and only. This is the main difference between second-hand shops and other shops”, Toni Milusheva who just bought a second-hand flaxen pants said. People buy second-hand clothing with the conviction that they would be the only ones wearing such types of clothes, although they can afford to buy new clothes. This is called competition!

“People can find all types of wonderful items in second-hand shops”, Ivaylo Karadzhov went on to say. “In my view, most of the clothes sold in this shop are not even second-hand. Most contemporary shops in Bulgaria's shopping malls are unable to offer such a great diversity of clothes.”

The elderly clients of the second-hand shops are still driven by the striving to look different. Their aspiration dates back to the socialist period when everyone intuitively wanted to escape from the uniform clothing. On the other hand, the young Bulgarians buy second-hand items driven by purely practical motives. Radka Teneva for instance is a young Bulgarian mother who believes that it is not worth buying new clothes for her kids, because children grow too quickly. I have been exchanging second- or even third and fourth-hand baby clothes with my friends, Radka told Radio Bulgaria on her way out of a second-hand shop with a plastic bag full of child clothes.

“If people have the patience to look for good second-hand clothes long enough, they can find items of better quality as compared to the ones sold in some local boutiques. It is matter of psychological adjustment, because not all people can wear clothes that previously belonged to other people”, Radka Teneva contends. Besides, I would not like to support the terrible working conditions in developing countries from the Far East with the money spend on new clothes, Radka Teneva concluded.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov