En Marruecos, la ropa del mercadillo es más tendencia que nunca

Flea market clothing is becoming more popular among young people in Morocco, where content creators like young Rim Ajakkaf have managed to break down stereotypes about second-hand clothing by inspiring more stylish and modern styles. 

Rim, a 32-year-old content creator who studied design, collaborates with several brands and has loved second-hand clothes since she was a child. 

A passion that led her three years ago, during the pandemic, to open accounts on Tik Tok and Instagram, where she has almost half a million followers. 

From her flat in Casablanca, she shares tutorials on modern styles with second-hand clothes. He says that young people now have a better perception of second-hand clothes. 

"In Morocco, vintage is becoming more and more trendy. People are more accepting of the idea and have become more supportive of this type of clothing also because of its ecological dimension," she says in an interview with EFE. 

Buying old clothes is not a new phenomenon in the Maghreb country. In the popular markets there have always been shops for the sale of old clothes, although they are generally sold in the open air under tents. 

Commonly called "joutiya" or "l'bal" in Moroccan dialect, they are frequented by people of all ages and social classes who spend hours searching through piles of clothes, shoes and bags for brand-name clothes at prices starting at 5 dirhams (40 euro cents). 

"You have to spend the whole day there, you may search a lot and find little, but you can also find unique products. 

"L'bal' is like therapy," she says, smiling as she shows off her favourite discovery: a leather jacket that cost her only 10 dirhams (80 cents).  

Since she was a child, Rim used to visit all the flea markets in the towns where she and her parents would spend the summer and collect "original" pieces. 

"I was asked how I got my style, but it was hard for me to say it was flea market clothes. It was frowned upon, they commented that it was dirty clothes, that it had diseases, that it was poor people's clothes, etc. I didn't feel like justifying myself and avoided answering," she says. 

But everything changed when, in confinement, Rim took to social media, posting tutorials with modern "looks" created with second-hand clothes, and began to talk openly about the subject.

"In my first videos I used the word 'vintage', but one day, tired of keeping quiet, I made one about clothes I had found at a flea market in the city of Mohamedia," she explains. 

The confession, she adds, then divided her followers into opponents and supporters, and the latter were relieved when she spoke openly about clothes she had previously referred to as "thrift store" or "vintage", instead of saying "l'bal" because it sounded pejorative and stigmatising. 

"I was surprised that my acquaintances started to ask me for more details about the markets I go to," she says happily. 

L'bal jumps into the networks  

The perception of second-hand clothes has changed, and these garments have moved from flea markets to digital platforms with the appearance in recent years in the Maghreb country of pages for the sale of second-hand clothes on social networks.  

Rim buys there too, albeit at a higher price than in the popular souk. Thanks to these platforms, she has found some of her favourite bags, such as the "lady Dior" or the Gucci "jackie", at cheap prices. 

In her room you can see long rows of shirts of different sizes and colours, jackets, coats, trousers, dresses; as well as old caps and berets hanging or on a rack, specialised fashion books, dozens of shoes and perfumes of different brands. 

It is also the place where she appears in front of her camera to publish her tutorials. She now has more than 370,000 followers on Tik Tok and 99,000 on Instagram. 

With her "bank" of clothes she goes to parties, combining, for example, a long, shiny patent leather trench coat from a flea market with Fendi tights, or she makes videos for brands she collaborates with dressed in a second-hand skirt and shoes with floral soles similar to Louisa Clark's character in "Me Before You", which cost her around three euros. 

"Vintage is like haute couture. You only wear it yourself, that gives you a personality in clothing, because you never wear the same as everyone else. At the flea market you develop your own personal style and give those clothes a new life".