I styled a full editorial shoot in DUMBO this week on entirely thrifted clothes and I have never felt more myself at work.
The brief was sustainable, downtown, a little undone. The budget was, to use the industry term, not real. So I did what I always secretly want to do and pulled the whole thing from secondhand.
We shot at that classic spot on Washington Street where the Manhattan Bridge frames up between the buildings — yes, the most photographed block in Brooklyn, I know, I know, but the client wanted it and I'm not the one signing checks.
Here's the breakdown because I know people search for this stuff. The coat came from a vintage shop in Bushwick off the Jefferson L stop. The trousers were ten dollars at a church sale in Park Slope. The blouse was mine, honestly, a Goodwill find from years ago. Boots borrowed from Sana, who will want them back and will not get them promptly.
Styling a shoot on thrifted clothes is harder than pulling from a showroom, and I'll be honest about that. You can't just call in three sizes. You find one perfect thing and you build the whole look around it like a prayer.
But the payoff. When the model stood under the Manhattan Bridge in that camel coat and the light hit and the photographer gasped — nobody there knew the entire look cost less than forty dollars.
That's the part that gets me. We've been taught that good fashion means expensive, means new, means consuming. And I grew up in a house where my mother altered and re-wore saris for twenty years and looked more elegant than anyone.
Sustainable styling isn't a trend for me. It's just how I was raised, dressed up in a fancier word.
The shoot wrapped at golden hour. We got dumplings in Vinegar Hill after. I kept thinking about how the best thing I made all week cost almost nothing and meant almost everything.
The clothes already existed. I just gave them somewhere to go.
Love,