Yes, absolutely thrift does not cohere as a set of practices and discourses! As one of my students —Roseanne O.— demonstrated in her thrift store ethnography this last semester, even in the same town, at the same chain there are clear distinctions between the different locations that imagine distinct consumers and needs. At the Salvation Army closest to campus, there is an “ugly sweater” rack for all the students purchasing these as novelties for themed parties. Similar sweaters are not separated at the store that serves the non-students, and that is located in the same building that provides other services to low-income or homeless persons. And because bodies and clothes interact and activate certain ideas about each the other, the same sweater on a college student going to a themed party is funny because it is outdated, and on a young fashion blogger pairing it with leggings is innovative because it is renewed, and on an older woman imagined as its appropriate owner the sweater will be “just” unfashionable because (supposedly) so is its wearer.

— Shopping with Threadbared: A Conversation

For example, people who make conscious choices to buy sustainable fashions are saying something about their concerns for the environment. Consumers who reject so-called fast fashion often do so based on their political-ethical distaste for clothes made in poor labor conditions, disposable clothes that are bad for environment, or legally suspect clothes that are sometimes “knocked off” designs from luxury labels. One of the most fervent defenses of vintage or thrifted clothes (overlapping but not, as you point out, synonymous sartorial categories) is made by Kaja Silverman. She argues that “thrift-shop dressing” is a postmodern gesture that disavows “the binary logic through which fashion distinguishes ‘this year’s look’ from ‘last year’s look,’ a logic that turns upon the opposition between ‘the new’ and ‘the old’ and works to transform one season’s treasures in to the next season’s trash.” She goes on to celebrate “vintage clothing [as] a mechanism for crossing vestimentary, sexual, and historical boundaries.” There’s a lot that goes unsaid in each of these sartorial-ideological positions. For example, eco-conscious consumers forget that oftentimes the processes for producing sustainable fabrics like bamboo require heavily toxic chemicals that are decidedly environmentally un-friendly or that thrift stores are full of mass or fast fashions from past sartorial eras.

— Shopping with Threadbared: A Conversation

More importantly, when we appeal to some notion of an unmodified or undecorated body, we participate in the adoption of a false neutrality. We pretend, in those moments, that there is a natural body or fashion, a way of dressing or wearing yourself that is not a product of culture. Norms always masquerade as non-choices, and when we suggest that for example, resisting sexism means everyone should look androgynous, or resisting racism means no one should modify the texture of their hair, we foreclose people’s abilities to expose the workings of fucked up systems on their bodies as they see fit.

— “Dress to Kill, Fight to Win” by Dean Spade

LET’S BE CLEAR / The wearing of tights as pants is an abomination. / TIGHTS ARE NOT PANTS.
sure / in the context of sports, / ballet, / hair metal, and / renaissance fairs, / tights function as suitable leg coverings, but still / they are not pants.
No. These are not activities that transform tights into pants; / these are historically / acceptable acts of / PANTLESSNESS.
Tights as pants leave / nothing to the imagination. / Tights as pants are an affront to those of us who / PREFER NOT TO KNOW / the most intimate details of their neighbors’ bodies.
Tights as pants are the fashion equivalent of / Too Much Information
This gratuitous divulgence / of assets repels where / the tights-as-pants wearer / presumably hopes to entice.
We have tired of tolerating / attempts to force tights into / this non-native garment / category, and have decided / to do something about it?

— tightsarenotpants.com