Category — Secondhand Wardrobe Shopping

Secondhand finds

Yesterday five dollars and thirty-one cents bought me two mugs, a pair of Harvé Barnard dress pants, workout shorts and the late, great George Carlin’s book, Brain Droppings. The store was especially crowded, as it always is a few days before Halloween. The holiday crowd makes me wonder why used clothing is considered OK on Halloween, but is looked down upon every other day of the year.

My blue blazer brought to me by the secondhand wardrobe spirit.

I love a casual jacket in the cooler weather, so last Wednesday, when I went to my local thrift store, that’s the first rack that I checked out.  At this particular place, everything is arranged by color, and I perused only those colors that I know are flattering, skipping over light brown, maroon and orange, which make me look like I need bed rest.

Eliminating all jackets that looked either too big or too small, I found two possibilities. One was yellow cotton duck and the other was blue heavy flannel in a traditional blazer style. The yellow duck looked great on the hanger, but the blue flannel, I just wasn’t so sure about. I’m usually not crazy about blazers because they’re too stuffy for my taste. But when I tried them on, the yellow fit terribly and the blue looked smashing. The casual color and fabric balanced out the stuffy style. For $3.50, I took it home and saw that I can wear it with most of my pants and 5 of my shirts. Bingo!

Regular retail stores tend to have lots of sizes but not a lot of choices in terms of style. Secondhand stores are the opposite—there are many styles but scattered sizing. That means I need to look more to find something that fits me when I’m shopping secondhand. It also means that I am more open to just about anything that fits, even if it’s unlike anything I’ve ever worn before. It is precisely because of the wealth of styles and the paucity of sizing that secondhand stores have opened me up to a world of style possibilities that I never would have considered. And this is another reason why I love a secondhand wardrobe so much—whenever I visit a thrift store, there is always the chance that I’ll find some new, wonderful thing I’d never thought of before, until that moment when the secondhand wardrobe spirit placed the garment in my hands.

I really love stripes, even to the point of sometimes combining different ones. I hadn’t found any striped shirts for a while and was happy that my secondhand wardrobe finds for the week were two for two dollars each–one for summer and one for winter. Yeah stripes!

The above photo is of my Marino Orlandi Italian handbag that sells for $350.00 and up. The price I paid at my local thrift store was three dollars. With bargains like these, who wouldn’t love shopping secondhand? The fact is that many people wouldn’t, and that’s because there is such a stigma attached to buying and wearing used clothing. I created Secondhand Wardrobe Day, which is August 25^th of each year, in order to fight this stigma.

I have begun laying the groundwork for a Secondhand Wardrobe Day celebration in 2009, including contests and competitions which will be posted on this blog. For now, I’ll keep writing about finding the bargains, and hope you’ll continue to join me.

Members of the Press: Leave a blog comment—it will remain unposted and will go directly to me.

Secondhand Clothing Stores: If your organization would like to sponsor a contest for 2009, please leave a blog comment.