This week I styled a fall lookbook made entirely from thrifted clothes and I want to tell you it was glamorous. It was not. It was gloriously chaotic.
The brief came Friday, shoot was Wednesday, budget was, and I quote, "see what you can do." In fashion that phrase means: perform a miracle for the price of a bagel.
So I did what I always do. I went hunting. L Train Vintage in Williamsburg first, then a longer trek to the by-the-pound spot in Bushwick where you dig through mountains and pray. Styling a lookbook from thrifted clothes means you can't just order the vision. You have to find the vision, argue with it, and build backwards.
I found a wool coat the color of chai, an oversized blazer with shoulders like a Bollywood villain, and three cashmere sweaters someone rich clearly abandoned. The whole haul cost less than one new designer scarf. Sustainability isn't just ethics for me, it's economics. I'm not rich, I'm resourceful.
The cursed part: a leather jacket I fell in love with that smelled, faintly, of a basement and someone's regret. I steamed it, aired it out my fire escape overnight, sprayed it with everything legal. It made the final cut. Fashion is 40 percent talent and 60 percent problem solving with a lint roller.
Shoot day, the studio in Long Island City, I pinned and tucked and safety-pinned reality into the shape of a mood board. The model was patient. The photographer was faster than my anxiety. And when I saw the frames come up on the monitor, all those secondhand pieces looking intentional and expensive and new, I felt that specific pride only thrifting gives you.
Styling a lookbook from thrifted clothes is the truest version of my job. Anyone can spend money. Making beauty out of what already exists, what someone else threw away, that's the whole art.
My design professors in Ahmedabad drilled this into me and I finally get it. Good taste isn't a bank account.
The planet, and my rent, thank me quietly.
Love,