The Cool of Pre-Loved
By Amelia Fairfax
There’s a Levi’s denim jacket in my wardrobe that I’ll never part with. Faded at the elbows, softened at the seams, it carries a life before mine. Whoever wore it first gave it a history I’ll never know, and I love that I’m adding another layer to the story. That’s the truth of pre-loved — the clothes already know how to live.
I see it everywhere now. A Burberry trench knotted loosely over a hoodie on Brick Lane, its lining frayed but still regal. Adidas Gazelles in deep green sliding across the tiles at Café 1001, worn down in all the right ways. A Ralph Lauren jumper spotted at Spiritland, stretched at the cuffs but carrying its shape like a memory. These aren’t brand-new statements. They’re garments softened by time, carrying the marks of lives well lived, now folded into new ones.
It takes me back to my Topshop years. Not just the escalators of Oxford Street or the storefronts in New York and LA, but the collective of people who made it happen. Designers, marketers, creatives — a group of dynamic, talented professionals who somehow managed to capture the energy of the moment and feed it back into the world. It was less about products on rails and more about momentum, community, the sense of being part of something bigger. When I see the rise of pre-loved today, it feels like an echo of that same spirit: clothes moving through hands and lives, carrying energy forward rather than leaving it behind.
Last week I pulled on a secondhand Diesel bomber with a vintage Adidas tee and my trusty Gazelles, and I ended up at Spiritland. The DJ was deep into a set that felt sculpted from memory and detail. Around me, people leaned into the sound, their style understated but intentional — a trench here, a band tee there, nothing brand-new but everything worn just right. In that room, no one was asking what season your jacket came from. What mattered was how it lived on you. That’s the magic of pre-loved: it bypasses the hunger for “new” and goes straight to authenticity.
London seems perfectly built for it. Markets at Portobello, rails at Beyond Retro, Camden side streets where Burberry rubs shoulders with Nike and vintage Westwood. It’s a city that thrives on layering — eras, textures, histories stacked like records in a crate. Pre-loved feels like the natural language of this place: you dig, you find, you wear, you pass on. Each piece gathering more life with every turn.
The cool of pre-loved isn’t just sustainability or economics, though those matter. It’s presence. It’s walking into a bar knowing your jacket has already danced through nights you weren’t part of, that your trainers have crossed other pavements, that your knitwear has warmed other shoulders. When you put them on, you don’t just wear fabric — you wear memory.
And that’s what excites me most. Fashion not as a sprint for the new, but as a relay — clothes carrying energy from one person to another, one city to the next, sound to sound. The collective spirit I felt in my Topshop years lives on here, only looser, freer, more open. Pre-loved is no longer second best. It’s the main stage. And in London, with its patchwork of past and present, it feels exactly right.
— Amelia xx
Amelia Fairfax writes about the fashion inside and outside listening spaces. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
