I had to pull looks for a shoot this week and my budget was, generously described, imaginary. So I did what I always do. I went thrifting.
The L to Jefferson Street, then a slow melt down Wyckoff into Bushwick. Thrifting in NYC summer is not glamorous. It is you, forty other sweaty people, and a rack of polyester that smells like decisions.
But this is my actual job, or the part of it I love most. Anyone can pull from a showroom. Building a look from a five-dollar rack is where the styling actually happens.
I was hunting for one thing. A 90s bias-cut slip dress, ideally in a rust or ochre, something that would photograph like liquid. I have learned that thrifting works best when you go in specific and stay open. Too vague and you drown. Too rigid and you miss the magic.
First spot, nothing but overpriced band tees and a leather jacket that would have cost me a kidney. Second spot, a wall of denim and a woman aggressively haggling over a Fendi baguette that was almost certainly not real.
Third spot, tucked past a hardware store, I found it. A silk slip in the exact rust I had been picturing, a small stain on the hem I could style around, eight dollars. I actually gasped. The owner looked at me like I was unwell.
Thrifting in this city has taught me more about fashion than my degree did, and I will say that in front of my professors. It teaches you construction, drape, what real silk feels like against your fingers versus the fakes. It teaches you patience.
My mother thrifts too, though she would never call it that. In Ahmedabad she reworked her old sarees into kurtas, into cushion covers, into my childhood frocks. Nothing wasted. Fast fashion would have baffled her. This whole sustainable movement people discovered recently, she was just being a sensible Gujarati woman.
I carried my haul back on the L, dress folded in my tote like something holy, arms full of possibility and mild heat exhaustion.
The shoot is Saturday. The slip dress is the whole look now. Eight dollars and a train ride.
Buy less, love harder, thrift often. That is the whole philosophy.
Love,