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.

The other night, after months of really bitter cold, my husband and I broke down and went to the enormous mall (we’re talking 1,700,000 square feet of retail space). Neither one of us likes going to malls because the point of them is to part people from their money. But on this particular night, we really needed to get out of the house. Because of the extreme cold, there weren’t a lot of choices.

It had been so long since we’d visited this place that I’d forgotten about the volume and variety of stuff being sold. Stuff for your home, stuff to wear, stuff to cook with, and especially stuff for bored teenagers who spend a lot of time wandering around the mall learning to become consuming adults.

On my regular thrift store jaunts, I’m constantly scratching my head, wondering why so much barely used or brand new clothing winds up there. The rare trip to my local mall reminds me that other folks have very different spending habits than I do. Will the recent downturn in the economy start to change that? It certainly has for some people, but that’s another topic for another day.

Meanwhile, I have to admit that I succumbed to the temptations of the mall on that cold night. I bought one book from the dollar store.

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.

I’ve had plenty of arguments with my teenaged children, but never about clothing. That’s because I have only one clothing rule for them—well, actually it only applies to my daughter, not my son. The purpose of the rule is to keep her safe and it is this—she cannot wear anything that I decide is too skimpy.

Having only one rule means that a) I can never be accused of being overly restrictive (at least in this arena), and b) my kids get to learn what styles they like and dislike. I do offer my opinion about quality and fit, but my kids are entitled to ignore me if they want to.

I’m relaxed about their clothing choices partly because the majority of what they wear comes from thrift stores and costs next to nothing, but also because there are so many other battles that are so much more important. They pick out something made out of cheap material? The price is three dollars, so who cares? They’ll learn something about fabric when it develops pills after they wear it two times. They want to wear only black? Gee, so do a majority of women who work in the fashion industry. They’re drawn to a pair of pants that I think is unflattering? Why is this my business?

Teens need to make good choices about things that matter like sex and drugs. They won’t learn how to best decide the important stuff if they aren’t allowed to choose the inconsequential stuff. The clothes just don’t matter.

I admit it—I sometimes buy new clothing. In fact there are items that I never, ever buy used, and I don’t even look in the areas of the store where these things are located. Everyone has a limit, even me. Here’s what I will only buy new:

1. Any and all underwear, except for beautiful old slips, which I love.
2. Swimwear. I don’t enjoy swimming and haven’t owned a bathing suit for the last decade. If I did need one, though, I’d spring for a new suit.
3. Socks.
4. Gloves or mittens made out of fabric, although I do occasionally buy used gloves that are made out of leather.

As a family, we are very careful to spend less than we have, and buying used clothing is one of the ways we do so. Since we’re saving so much on our clothing bills, we can afford to buy a few brand new things.

I grew up in sunny southern California and always wanted to look like the typical California girl—long straight blond hair, tall, tan. Too bad that I was born with dark curly hair, pale skin and only grew to be just over five feet tall. I never gave any thought to bleaching my hair or getting on any stretching machines, but I did spend an awful lot of time trying to change the color of my skin. I guess I was successful, if you think sun damage passes as something attractive.

It wasn’t until I was grown up that I understood that style is about trying to look your best, not trying to look like everybody else. My style suggestion for the day is to figure out what looking your best means. Re-working the lyrics of an ancient song, you’ve got to accentuate the positive and conceal the negative. We all have good and not-so-good aspects to our physical selves, and it’s ok to show the good and hide the rest. But you first have to know which is which. If you don’t have a clue, get in front of the mirror and ask these questions: What is it about me that looks nice? What would I rather hide? Remember to be kind to yourself while you’re looking. Do not compare yourself to the extraordinarily tall, skinny, young people on TV and in magazines who have the benefit of stylists, makeup artists, hairdressers and airbrushing. If this is really, really hard for you, you can also ask a loved one whom you trust to help.   

Back when I was a teenager, I didn’t understand that the idealized image of the California girl isn’t the only kind of attractiveness that there is. It would have been both healthier and a better use of my time to get to know my own strengths rather than trying to look like something that was impossible for me.

Just the other day a friend and I decided that the one thing that’s most important for secondhand clothing shops to have is a decent dressing room, with doors instead of curtains. I know that lots of people either do not try on clothing before they buy it or are absolutely happy trying things on right in the aisles, say pulling pants on underneath a roomy skirt or pulling a shirt over a thin top. But I won’t shop without a dressing room because most thrifts do not accept returns, I’m particular about how my clothes fit me and I need the privacy of a dressing room to make a considered judgment about whether to buy or not.  

Since we’re on the subject of dressing rooms, let’s get specific. There should be enough of them so that there aren’t long lines and they should have hooks for hanging up the clothes, a chair for sitting down to put shoes back on and a mirror.  

Dressing rooms also need locks. I can’t possibly be the only person who’s noticed how many people do not knock before they try to open the door. It happens to me all the time. Whenever it does, I make a point of yelling out, “IT’S RUDE TO TRY THE DOOR HANDLE BEFORE YOU KNOCK.” I kid myself that I’ll embarrass the person into behaving better. 

Today I found a pair of new Eddie Bauer pants for $3.00 at one of my secondhand store haunts. I knew that they hadn’t been worn because they had a little plastic bag with a spare button attached to the inside of the waistband.  

There is so much more new stuff at the thrift stores these days than there was decades ago when I first started shopping for used clothing. I’m guessing that the increase in volume has to do with two things: one is that now, more than ever before, everybody is racing around so much of the time that they don’t bother to return clothing that they don’t want; another is that retail stores discount items so often and so deeply that people buy things that they would otherwise leave on the rack at the store. It’s a great boon for us used clothing fiends, but not so great for those who aren’t getting use from what they buy. 

Although I tend to think of used clothing as something that’s great for those of us who don’t have loads of cash, on my visit to Connecticut where I found the pair of Ferragamos, which I’ve written about in the last 2 entries, I noticed an unusually large number of consignment shops. They were all in wealthy suburban areas, close to New York City, and I wondered why people who live in such lavish homes are selling their used clothing. And do the people in those lavish houses also buy from the consignment shops? 

I don’t have any satisfying answers here.  One friend suggested that women who don’t have jobs but who do have lots of expensive stuff might need to sell off some of their $1,000 purses and $2,000 dresses just to have cash for themselves. That made some sense, but it doesn’t explain the sheer number of consignment stores. Anyone out there want to enlighten me?