The important change is that it used to be a low-status activity, but now it's becoming a higher-status activity — at least until middle-class people get bored

The important change is that it used to be a low-status activity, but now it's becoming a higher-status activity — at least until middle-class people get bored of instagramming their thrift-shop finds. Although, the upper classes have always valued re-use and handing down. Alan Clark (not a man who would have thrived in today's political environment) once said: "The trouble with Michael Heseltine is that he had to buy his own furniture" i.e., he was lower class. There was a similarly snippy remark made about the furniture in Katherine Middleton's (Duchess of Cambridge) family home—it was too neat and new.