Saturday I took the L to Bedford with an empty tote and a styling brief, and came home with three perfect things and a backache.
Thrifting in Williamsburg is part treasure hunt, part patience exercise, part argument with myself about money. The good vintage near the L train isn't cheap anymore — the days of five-dollar Levi's are long buried — but the hunt itself still feels honest in a way that fast fashion never will.
I'm styling a small lookbook this month for an independent designer, all reworked and secondhand pieces, and my whole budget depends on me digging. So I dug.
First stop, a shop off North 7th where the woman behind the counter remembers me now, which feels like a tiny New York knighthood. I found a 1970s cotton blouse the exact saffron of a marigold garland, and I actually gasped out loud. The thrifting gods reward the patient and the slightly unhinged.
Here's the thing about secondhand work that I wish more people in fashion understood. Every piece has already lived. That marigold blouse had a life before me — somebody's mother, somebody's first job, somebody's heartbreak. When I style it onto a new body for a new shoot, I'm not erasing that. I'm continuing it.
That's the entire reason I work in slow and secondhand fashion instead of churning out trends. The industry I trained for in design school is one of the dirtiest on earth. Thrifting is my small, imperfect rebellion against it.
By 3PM the L was packed and I was sweating through my own outfit, hauling a bag of other people's rescued beautiful things back toward the bridge. I stopped for a slice on Bedford and ate it standing, surveying my finds like a smug little raccoon.
The marigold blouse is hanging in my room now, waiting for its shoot day. Every time I pass it I think of the flower markets back in Ahmedabad, the ones that turn whole streets orange.
Funny how the right secondhand piece can carry you halfway across the world.
Buy it used if you can. The planet and your wallet will both thank you.
Love,