People ask me where I get my clothes and they want me to name a brand. I never do. I say: the L train.
Thrifting the L train vintage circuit is less a shopping trip and more a devotional practice. I start at Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, which is touristy and overpriced now, yes, but there's one basement shop that still rewards patience. Then I hop back on toward Lorimer, and if I'm feeling ambitious I ride all the way to Bushwick where the real treasure lives and the prices haven't lost their minds yet.
This Saturday the circuit delivered. A 1970s camel wool coat, slightly too big in the shoulders, which is exactly how I like a coat — like it was borrowed from someone who loved it first. Thirty-eight dollars. I nearly cried on the rack. The woman at the register told me it had come in from an estate in Greenpoint. Someone's grandmother. I'm wearing her coat now and I feel responsible for it.
This is what I actually mean when I talk about sustainability in fashion, which has become such a corporate word it's almost meaningless. I don't mean a brand's recycled-polyester marketing line. I mean thrifting the L train vintage circuit until a garment with a whole past life chooses you, and you give it a future.
I work in this industry. I see how much gets made, how fast, how disposably. It's exhausting and a little heartbreaking. My degree was in fashion design and sometimes I feel like I'm in the business of managing a flood. So my weekends are my repair. My small rebellion.
My ammi used to re-stitch and re-wear the same few saris for a decade, altering them, lending them, passing them down. That's the original sustainable fashion. Indian women have been doing it for generations without a hashtag. I think about that every time I'm thrifting the L train vintage circuit, running my hands along somebody else's story.
The camel coat needs a button and a dry clean. I'll fix it myself at my kitchen table with a cup of chai and a bad reality show on. That's the whole ritual.
Buy less, borrow stories, ride the L.
Love,