By: Riley Drumm

Petite women know that finding clothing that truly fits from any clothing brand is a struggle in itself. In an era where thrifting has grown in popularity and the options to shop more sustainably have increased, there has been a growing cultural shift to buying secondhand and vintage shopping. Thrift stores like Goodwill are just one possibility of buying secondhand. Online shopping platforms like Depop and ThredUp have become a huge source for online shopping, as well as the endless listings on eBay and Poshmark for secondhand lovers. The question is, are these websites petite-friendly?

When looking at ThredUp’s website, there's an entire section under the Women’s tab dedicated to specialty sizing, including petite. The best part is that over 50,000 results come up when you search for petite clothing items. You can even filter the search further by category, brand, price, fabric, or color, narrowing down the very specifics of what you are looking for.

Depop is another platform that can be an excellent source for secondhand and vintage shopping, but is it the best for petite-inclusive shopping? The website itself is very simple, only having a few categories listed. That being said, there is no section dedicated to petite clothing on this site, while there is one dedicated to plus sizes. In this case, searching for petite styles might be more tedious. Here are several items I was able to pull out from Depop’s catalogue that fell in the petite size range.

Mini Dress vintage

Depop presented some challenges for petite women to find clothing on their platform, but it was not impossible. Shopping secondhand can be difficult for all sizes, but for those whose size falls under a special category, it becomes slightly harder to refine through clothing that is not designated for petite bodies in this case. Especially when shopping online, unless there is a section dedicated solely to petite items, finding something that will fit is going to be hit or miss.

The best part of secondhand shopping, of course, is finding pieces that are unique and special to you. It is more sustainable than second-hand shopping, especially from bigger brands like Reformation and Ralph Lauren, where you can even get the items oftentimes for a cheaper price. While it may be a slightly more tedious process to shop online secondhand as a petite woman, there seem to be some options and styles that can work for the eco-friendly or the vintage lovers!