Old Clothes, New Corridor: The Business of Second-Hand and Up-Cycled Apparel in Pakistan and China, Read Through CPEC and the Views of Young Designers in Pakistan

Um E Ammara, Prof Zhang Zhe

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Young Designers, Second-hand, up-cycled clothing, Qualitative.

The global trade in second-hand and up-cycled apparel has grown from an informal survival market into a recognised commercial category, and Pakistan sits at an unusual intersection of that trend: a long-established informal resale sector, a fast-growing textile-manufacturing base tied to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and a young generation of fashion and textile-design graduates entering the industry with direct opinions about where it should go next. This paper reports a qualitative study of sixteen semi-structured interviews with Pakistani respondents (aged 20-32, twelve with a background in fashion or textile design) on the business realities of buying, wearing, and designing with second-hand and up-cycled clothing, set against a comparative reading of young Chinese designers' and consumers' views on the same trade, drawn from prior published interview research. Respondents describe a viable but underdeveloped commercial category: strong latent demand, a workable price anchor of roughly a 50% discount against comparable new fast-fashion items, and two concrete business obstacles unresolved hygiene trust and a lingering association between second-hand clothing and poverty that current informal retailers largely do not address. Young designers in the sample were the most commercially optimistic group, treating up-cycling as a design discipline and a brand opportunity rather than a compromise, a stance that closely tracks how young designers in the Chinese comparator research talk about the same trade. Views on CPEC were split: roughly half of respondents expect CPEC-linked textile investment to undercut second-hand and up-cycled apparel on price, while the rest see it as a route to better machinery, recycling infrastructure, and Chinese-style resale platforms entering Pakistan. The paper closes with concrete recommendations for up-cycling entrepreneurs, brand marketers, and CPEC-linked industrial policy.

Received: 22 Jul 2026, Received in revised form: 16 Aug 2026, Accepted: 21 Aug 2026, Available online: 25 Aug 2026

10.22161/ijaers.138.8