Category — General Secondhand Wardrobe Thoughts

I ushered in the week by donating a carload of used clothing to my favorite charity thift. I have also started working on Secondhand Wardrobe Week for next year. Here is what I have in mind–a contest where blog readers post photos of thirift store bargains and vote for which they like the best. The winners will receive gift certificates to local thrift stores. I have started talking to thrift store managers about donating gift certificates and have begun working on both the legalities and the technical issues involved in contests so that I’m ready in 2012. I will keep you posted.

To explain why I created Secondhand Wardrobe Week, I need to tell you a bit about my childhood. I grew up wearing clothing that was often stained and too small. My mother would take me shopping in September, before school started. The few items I’d bring home were supposed to last all year. By December, most of my clothes were either too small or stained. The experience of wearing such raggedy clothes was humiliating, but I never considered that used clothing was an alternative.

The reason I didn’t even think of shopping secondhand was because I equated used clothing with complete desperation, and I couldn’t bear to think of myself as desperate.

I didn’t come up with such a negative idea about secondhand clothing on my own–there’s a stigma about it that many people, even in this tough economy, still believe. I created Secondhand Wardrobe Week because I want to smash that stigma. It hurts me to know that there are children today who go to school in too small, stained clothes because they are uncomfortable shopping for used clothing. It also upsets me to know that there are people who need work but feel that they can’t afford appropriate job interview clothes because they do not know that great, unbelievably inexpensive garments are available used.

Please help me smash the stigma. Have a look around this site, subscribe, leave me a comment, or buy my book for somebody who could benefit from learning how to find the bargains. Most importantly, if you already buy your clothing used, tell people about it, because the best way to defeat beliefs that don’t serve us well is to shed light on them.

I believe that there are great environmental, economic, and style benefits to be gained from buying and wearing used clothing. That’s why I blogged about the subject from March 2008 to April 2009. You’ll find those old blog entries by scrolling down this page. On the other pages of this site you’ll find background information about Secondhand Wardrobe Week as well as information about my book, The Secondhand Wardrobe.

Watch this space in the upcoming months for videos about secondhand fashion, bargain hunting, ecological concerns as they relate to textiles, and other issues about secondhand clothes. I’ll be interviewing experts in these areas, so if you have any suggestions about who would make an interesting interviewee, please leave me a comment.

My friend Joanne recently emailed me to say that she feels “kinda ‘funny’ about wearing someone else’s clothes (you know, vibes and spirits from the original owner). But”, she went on to write, “in today’s economy, perhaps I should re-think that.” She raises an interesting point. In general, if something gives me the heebie-jeebies, I stay away from it. Put another way, I believe that my intuition always works in my favor. I have made my best decisions when I’ve paid attention to it, and my worst ones when I’ve ignored it. So I try to pay attention. When I run into something in a thrift store that gives me the creeps, I leave the item there, even if it’s really, really inexpensive, and I really, really like it. That being said, in all the years I’ve been thrift store shopping, it’s only happened a few times. Once I brought home a sweater that had an unpleasant feel about it. I washed it and wore it a few times. It continued to give me the creeps, so I donated it back to the thrift store. I don’t know if my unpleasant feeling had to do with something physical about the sweater (itchy fiber? not quite the right color?), or if I really was picking up the vibe from a former owner. At that point, it didn’t matter to me what was bothersome about the garment because I’d gotten my two dollars and fifty cents worth out of it.

63 Years Old & Still Going Strong!

I bought a used vacuum right after my husband and I got married, 22 years ago. The vacuum was already 41 years old at the time. It set me back $35.00 and worked wonderfully up until a few weeks ago, when it started consistently breaking new belts. I hauled it out to my car and took it to one of the few repair shops in town. The service cost much more than the vacuum did when I bought it, but was less expensive than buying a new one. And of course, that’s what the repair shop people wanted me to do—buy a new one. They tried to sell me when I first walked into the store and again over the phone before they fixed the old one.

Aside from it costing more to buy new, I just hate the thought of filling the overcrowded landfills with anything that still has use. Now that it’s been fixed, the vacuum works like a charm and has plenty of good years left. The next time it needs to be repaired I’ll be shopping around. Not for a newer model, but for a different repair shop.

My daughter loves a secondhand wardrobe as much as I do, and it’s just my good fortune that we are almost the same size. She examines pants much more carefully than I do and when she tries them on I sit in the dressing room with her. I hang up those that are too small for her and try on the ones that are just a bit too big. I’ve gotten some of my favorite pants this way.

Last summer when we visited a friend in San Francisco we stopped by a few Goodwill stores. I found a fantastic jacket and a belt that were both just a bit too small for me, but that fit my daughter perfectly. Shopping for the secondhand wardrobe is great fun when done alone, it’s more fun with people you care about, but it’s even better with people who wear almost, but not quite the same size!

Having trouble locating the perfect late 60’s/early 70’s garb at your local thrift store? I’ve got a book for you. The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book by Bordow and Rosenberg, originally published in 1972 has been reissued. Those of you with modest sewing skills or an interest in learning can use this book to give secondhand finds a vintage feel, although most of the book is devoted to from-scratch patterns for items such as caftans and ponchos.

I can tell you that those of us who were young in 1970, when the book was first published, actually did want to look like “…pirates and Native Americans…. We longed to be fairy princesses…”, as one of the authors notes in the 2008 introduction. The designs are definitely representative of what we wore then, but I can’t vouch for the patterns, because I haven’t made any of them. Although I enjoyed dressing like a fairy princess when I was a teenager, my taste in clothing has definitely changed since then.  By the way, check out this shot of the original cover. Now that’s what I call groovy!

My daughter loves her new prom dress

My daughter found her prom dress last Saturday. It cost five dollars at a local thrift store and is in perfect condition. Garments that are only worn for special occasions often are in wonderful shape because they usually only get worn a few times. Except for a minor alteration to the shoulder straps, the dress fits her like a dream, looks nothing like what everybody else will be wearing, and according to my quickie internet search, comparable dresses by the same manufacturer run around $150. And although she loves this dress, since prom is months away, my daughter has time to continue to snoop around the thrifts, just in case there’s something out there that she likes even more. I can afford to spring for another five bucks, or even ten, if it’ll make her happy.

My husband and I have religiously put money away for college for our two kids. We started when they were babies and in recent years, our children have also contributed a percentage of their earnings from their part-time jobs. The reason we’ve had extra money to put away is because we’re frugal in general. Buying and wearing used clothing instead of new clothing is one of the ways we’ve kept our expenses down and our savings up.

It’s too bad that the cost of going to college has increased at such a shameful rate while we’ve been putting money away.  Our stockpile of college savings is now actually an anthill compared to the Mount Everest that our children need to get themselves through four or six years of college. Necessity has forced me to create a new plan. It’s so simple that I’m surprised that the college catalogues don’t suggest it. Here it is– my husband and I will sell all of our possessions including our home. For our kids, and of course, their colleges, to get the full benefit of our finances, my husband and I will also have to eliminate any need that we might have now or in the future. We’ll do that by eating enough arsenic to kill ourselves. That’s right, you read it here first; it’s the ultimate parental sacrifice. The kids might miss us, and we’ll miss out on grandkids and anything else that the future might hold, but at least the colleges will be happy, and what else matters?

Disclaimer: This is supposed to be a humorous entry. I do not intend to eat arsenic, nor does my husband. Nobody should eat arsenic. Instead they should stay well and explain to the financial aid people at the colleges of their choice that the tuition and fees are ridiculous. They should then demand more support for students and families.

Manufacturers often put their names, slogans and logos on clothing, but this time Tommy Hilfiger really went overboard. I was sniffing around one of my favorite secondhand stores when I found a tee shirt with the following printed on the chest:

Tom-my Hil-fig-er 1.: American 2: quality tailored clothing, sportswear, jeans and athletic apparel for men, women and children adj. 3: fun, free, spirited, a desirable addition to your wardrobe 4: a group of people who demand distinctive style ＜~ customers have an eye for details ＞ v. 5:to twist tradition, to reinvent the classics to create FASHION FREEDOM 6: to chuck convention, but with panache syn see Duke and Dutchess of Windsor 7: Whoever you are, whatever you wear, TOMMY HILFIGER is you.

This whole issue of logos/slogans/names of companies prominently displayed on garments raises an interesting question for me. I understand that the companies benefit when people wear this stuff, but why do consumers go along with it?