Took the L train to Williamsburg on Saturday for thrifting and came home with someone's entire abandoned personality, and I mean that as the highest compliment.
Thrifting in Williamsburg is a full sport. You have to go early, before the vintage sellers with their curated racks and curated prices show up. I got off at Bedford Avenue at 10am like a woman with a plan, because I was.
Fall transition dressing is the hardest thing in fashion and I will die on this hill. It's 68 degrees at noon and 54 by 7pm. You need layers that mean something, not just a cardigan you resent.
So the mission was: one great blazer, one knit, one thing I'd never buy new. Sustainability isn't a caption for me, it's the actual math of my paycheck versus my taste, which are two people who don't speak.
Found a chocolate-brown wool blazer, slightly oversized, lining intact, that I would have paid real designer money for. Nine dollars. I nearly performed a Bollywood item number in the aisle.
Here's my thrifting rule, since people always ask: check the seams, check the shoulders, ignore the size on the tag entirely. Sizing is a lie invented to make us sad. Try everything.
The knit was harder. Fast-fashion sweaters shed like a golden retriever, so I only buy natural fibers secondhand. Found a cream lambswool one from a brand that stopped existing in probably 2009. Someone loved it. Now I do.
What I love about thrifting for fall is that you're building a wardrobe with history in it. That blazer went somewhere before it went with me. There's a whole invisible past life stitched into it.
Styled it all this week for work with wide trousers and my one good pair of loafers and got asked three times where the blazer was from. A donation bin in Brooklyn, madam. It's couture now.
Best fall haul I've done in years. Nine-dollar blazer, priceless smugness.
Love,