If environmentalism in its embryonic form was made from Hessian and hemp, these years in which the movement is coming of age is an altogether prettier affair.

Designer sustainable fashions have come a long way, but, perhaps more importantly, the appetite for vintage clothes has dramatically increased too.

“I think all the messages we receive about recycling and so on make vintage appealing,” says Jo-ann Fortune from website vintage brighton.com. “There’s less guilt involved in shopping for second-hand items.”

Vintage Brighton launched in mid-September to celebrate Brighton’s thriving vintage scene. As well as a vintage shop directory and events listings, it also has blog and feature content, shop profiles, interviews, event write-ups and “guest posts from some very cool and interesting people who are in love with the iconic styles of the past”.

The site developed from Jo-ann’s personal interest. In her day-to-day life she works as fashion and retail editor at digital marketing company iCrossing, and in the evenings she found herself writing about vintage finds and Brighton’s vintage scene on her personal blog. She described vintage shopping as like visiting a hands-on museum, with hundreds of stories to be told through finding items from the past, and also compares it to a sport, the hunt for something brilliant buried in a rubbish heap.

“I thought Brighton could do with a website that brought everything vintage together in one place,” Jo-ann says.

“I was amazed that there wasn’t something similar out there already, given the number of vintage shops and events that do so well in the area, as were all the friends I told about the idea. It seemed like there was a gap that needed to be filled.

I populated the site with lots of lovely words and luckily had a clever computer-nerd friend to help me out with all the site-build and coding.”

So why the sudden interest in second-hand and vintage clothing? Jo-ann says that fashion has come to a bit of a dead end. It’s hard for designers to do things that haven’t been done before, with catwalk shows often inspired by styles from previous eras, such as 1950s-style skirts or 1970s-style trousers of the current season.

“I also think the recession and television shows such as Mary, Queen Of Shops made people more willing to buy second-hand clothes at bargain prices. Buying vintage also makes it easier to create an individual style, with pieces that you won’t see everyone else in, and that’s very important in fashion.”

And what about the argument that fashion is too ephemeral to ever be truly sustainable? “Fashion exists on the desire for the new,” says Jo-ann. “So I don’t think it can ever be truly sustainable. However, it is encouraging to see the industry embracing more sustainable and ethical methods of production and reusing not just the styles, but the materials of the past.”

For her personal collection of vintage stuff, Jo-ann has most recently been collecting the sultry prints of JH Lynch and Lou Shabner, found in flea markets, charity shops and eBay. “My husband takes the mick out of me,” she says. “But he can’t complain about me bringing pictures of exotic half-naked women into the flat.”

* If you would like your vintage business or event listed free of charge on vintagebrighton.com, email Jo-ann Fortune at vintage brighton@gmail.com.