Thousands gathered in Roxbury last Saturday to buy used—sometimes decades-old—clothing. The Massive Thrift Market, which drew over 80 vendors and more than 4,000 shoppers, was a joint endeavor of pop-up retailers Thrift2Death and Select Markets.

“This was like no other event we’ve done in the past,” said 21-year-old Joaquin Crosby-Lizarde, a senior at Northeastern University and co-founder of Select Markets. “It was just an insane experience.”

Crosby-Lizarde helped organize his first event less than a year ago. As a native New Yorker, he says the culture of the city played a role in the idea for Select Markets.

“New York was a lot of inspiration for us. There’s always events like this, stuff going on,”  said Crosby-Lizarde. “In Boston as a whole, we felt like there weren’t enough events, especially cheap events, for young people under 21. Combined with that, we weren’t really seeing fashion-related stuff.”

So, Crosby-Lizarde and a few friends decided to create their own. Their first event, hosted at the Piano Craft gallery in November 2023, featured a small group of vendors and drew a crowd of 300—raising a few hundred dollars in the process.

“We were like, ‘Wow, this actually has an audience and a market,’ and we put in literally, like, 1% of our time,” said Crosby-Lizarde. “I wondered what actual dedication and effort could lead to.”

By their second event, Select Markets had doubled their audience. By their latest event, they’d increased it more than tenfold.

Select Markets isn’t alone in their exponential growth. The U.S. secondhand market has grown 87% since 2018, and 53% of Americans say they’re interested in buying more secondhand and thrifted items.

While secondhand sales boom, so do fast fashion brands like Shein, H&M, and Zara—who dominate the market with trendy, rapidly produced clothing sold at low price points. That comes with a cost, though: 20% of global water waste, 10% of global carbon emissions, and millions of tons of microplastics are produced by the fashion industry.

“It’s horrible, and not enough people know about it,” said Nathan Domingos, a vendor at Massive Thrift Market.

Domingos said fast fashion pushed him to create his own brand, Minted Supply.

“I got into [design] because I was fed up with street fashion, brands like Stussy that just plaster their logo on clothes and resell ten thousand copies of the same shirt for crazy prices,” Domingos said. “It contributes to waste, it’s awful.”

But he isn’t convinced thrifting is a solution.

“You’d hope it would [help], but the reality is not everyone understands the idea of thrifting,” Domingos said. “Sure, it’s trending on TikTok, but that’s not gonna stop people from spending $5 on a Shein T-shirt when they can get it instantly.”

Cam Roberts, another vendor at Massive Thrift Market, disagreed. He claimed that thrifting events like Massive Thrift help promote awareness of sustainable fashion.

“Thrifting shows that everything you may be looking for is already out there. And the sustainability behind that […] really calls to me,” Roberts said. “That’s just what I love.”

Crosby-Lizarde is hopeful, too. By encouraging others to shop secondhand, he feels he can promote sustainability, expand the clothing life cycle, and minimize the effects of fast fashion.

“Select Markets is definitely going to stay consistent, stay frequent, and you can definitely expect to see a lot more events in the coming weeks, months, and years,” Crosby-Lizarde said.