Photo by Vinnie Cammarano
Key Points
I hate shopping, but I do get a kick out of thrift shops.
These places aren’t so much retail establishments as they are Museums of What People With Credit Cards Once Thought Were Good Ideas.
It seems to be a growing trend for buildings that formerly housed some other kind of retail to convert to thrift shops, which is kind of appropriate: Previously owned stores selling previously owned stuff.
This sends a confusing economic message. Is it a good sign, meaning your town has a lot of people who can afford to donate stuff? Or is it a bad sign, meaning people around here can’t afford new?
I like a third option: That it is a sign of intelligent life. I might not qualify but will use myself as an example anyhow. I have five sportcoats. One, a silk-and-wool blend tailored in Uruguay and purchased new at a men’s shop in Taos, N.M., cost $175 almost 30 years ago. The other four were picked up at thrift stores and all together don’t add up to half that.
I can’t tell much difference in them. Neither, apparently, can anybody else. One I spent $11 on has been worn dozens of times to graduations, weddings, dinners, parties and speeches and never in all those outings has anybody ever asked, “who owned that before you did?”
So, if nobody can tell that a garment is used, why would anybody pay $164 more than necessary to get one? Is “new” worth that much… IF it was new when I got it.
I have no reason to trust New Mexicans or tailors from Uruguay, wherever that is. There’s no telling how much that garment might have been worn before somebody slapped that fancy label on it and shipped it off to Taos.
And there are bigger issues than economics at play here: Fashion sense and taste, of which I have absolutely none. I don’t have a real good track record when it comes to selecting clothes other people approve of. A lot of paisley shirts come to mind.
When I buy used, I know there’s at least one other person on Earth who thought that at one time it was a good choice. And occasionally you get some validation.
Once I went to a restaurant in a sport coat I had just picked up earlier in the day at the Habitat store. It was a nice fit and had distinctive gold-colored buttons. I seemed to catch the eye of two attractive young women, and after some whispered talk, they approached my table.
One asked if she could look more closely at the coat. She examined the label, gasped slightly and turned to the other woman and said, “I told you.”
Then to me, “this coat belonged to our grandfather.”
The second woman nodded and added somberly, “we almost buried him in it.”
THAT was the validation part. When you’re dressed well enough to be seen in a coffin, you know you’ve made a good clothing choice.