Eight Things to Know About Secondhand September
Surbhi ChadhaSeptember usually means a wardrobe reset, with runways and marketing calendars pushing the season’s new arrivals. Oxfam’s Secondhand September campaign runs against that script, asking shoppers to buy nothing new for the month.
For one month, people agree to buy no new clothes at all. It started in the UK in 2019 and has since grown into a global event, with ordinary shoppers, charity shops and even big fashion brands taking part. The rule stays simple: choose secondhand, borrowed or swapped clothes over new ones, and let that one small habit add up.
Here is what the campaign actually involves, what it has achieved so far, and where the scepticism about it comes from.
#1 It started with a single pledge in 2019
Oxfam launched Secondhand September in 2019 with one ask: buy no new clothes for 30 days. The original sign-up drew more than 50,000 pledges in its first year, a scale that surprised even Oxfam’s own campaign team at the time.
#2 This year marks its eighth run
What began as a single UK campaign has repeated every September since, and 2026 marks its eighth consecutive year. It has moved from a one-off idea into a fixed date on the sustainability calendar, alongside fixtures like Fashion Revolution Week.
#3 The ask is simple, not absolute
The pledge covers new clothing bought in shops or online. Thrifting, swapping, borrowing and renting all count as secondhand under the campaign’s own rules, so the month is less about going without and more about choosing where a garment comes from.
#4 The water savings are concrete
Oxfam’s own campaign materials for 2026 put a number on the impact. Buying just one pair of jeans and one T-shirt secondhand instead of new saves roughly the water in 20,000 standard bottles, water that would otherwise go into growing cotton, dyeing fabric and finishing a new garment.
#5 Donations move real volume
The campaign’s other half is donation, not only purchase. Oxfam Scotland alone diverts around 14,000 tonnes of clothing, more than 47 million items, from landfill each year through what shoppers hand into its stores.
#6 It has genuine commercial pull
Past campaigns brought the Oxfam Online Shop more than 8,000 new shoppers and a 46% rise in sales over the month. For a charity retailer, that is not a marginal bump. It suggests secondhand shopping still has room to grow well beyond its current customer base.
#7 Big fashion brands have started opting in
Circularity platform Archive has run the campaign alongside nearly two dozen fashion brands, including Dr. Martens, Diane von Furstenberg, Marimekko, Oscar de la Renta and The North Face.
Each brand promotes its own resale or trade-in scheme for the month rather than simply pointing shoppers to Oxfam’s pledge.
#8 Not everyone is convinced it is working
Coverage of the campaign has started asking a harder question. Sustainability writers have pointed out that fast-fashion-adjacent brands can join a secondhand campaign for a month of good press without changing how much they produce the other eleven months. A brand’s participation is worth checking against what it actually sells in October.
Change Begins With You
Every wardrobe choice sends a signal back through the supply chain, whether or not it is meant to. Choosing a piece made by a named artisan, from natural fibres and inherited technique, tells that supply chain what kind of fashion deserves to be made again.
That choice does not belong to a brand, a policy or a marketing campaign. It belongs to the person deciding what to buy next, one purchase at a time.
Fashion Worth Keeping
At TuDuGu, we believe real sustainability in fashion begins at the source. A garment made slowly, by a named artisan, using natural fibres and techniques passed down through generations, is built to last for years rather than a single season.
Traceability, fair pay and craftsmanship are not optional extras. They are what gives a garment its worth, long before it ever reaches a wardrobe. Every piece made this way is made to be kept, not replaced.
