Thrifting is about style but it's mostly about story
My headline option was: Thrifting is my version of exercise. Weirdly, both work.
I really dislike overexertion. Ask my husband Tony or any of my close friends, I speak slowly and I move slowly. Before Betty, I also used to enjoy reclining. A lot. Tony calls me the “ultimate recliner” and I can’t argue with the man.
My idea of a really bad time is high impact exercise or running. People who enjoy burpees and box jumps are like aliens to me. I love these aliens and ultimately ended up marrying one, but every time I walk past a group fitness class where the music is blaring and everyone is getting yelled at, all I can think is: “Why would you put yourself through that?!” All that pain and sweating and panting. I’m stressed just thinking about it.
My sister recently ran her first marathon which makes her this kind of senior alien to me. It’s giving cardio authority. It’s giving resilience. It’s giving commitment.
Me? I’ve cried all three times I’ve been talked into doing the City to Surf or literally paid to do it. Well, I should clarify. I wasn’t paid, the website I worked for did this big deal with a major shoe brand and I was sold into the campaign. The winning idea? Our editor who hates running is going to transform her relationship with running by hiring a running coach, training for six weeks and then running in the City to Surf in these special [insert sponsor here] shoes. Will she fall in love with the sound of her feet pounding the pavement? Will she go on to run marathons?
No.
Did she cry halfway and want to give up but couldn’t because she thought she’d get fired?
Yes.
And I know what all of the aliens reading this are thinking — it’s the endorphins, Alison! The endorphins! I know, I know. And yes, every time someone has convinced me to work with a PT, I do feel better in my body. My mindset is stronger. I absolutely sleep better and my posture improves.
And yet… I never stick with it and don’t ever miss it. It’s also pretty clear why I latched onto Vedic meditation. Sit down for 20 minutes, twice a day, and shut your eyes. Very good.
But there’s something I do enjoy doing that gets my heart beating fast and my arms aching from carrying too many things around in a tiny basket for hours on end, and that's thrifting. The thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of the find… endorphins!
Thrifting as a throughway to expressing and exploring my authentic personal style is something I’m doing more of in my return to naturalness which, at its essence, is about resourcefulness.
I wish I could say my love affair with shopping pre-loved pieces comes from a desire to look unique or to be that cool girl in the room wearing vintage, but it’s actually a lot deeper than that.
Growing up, buying secondhand was pretty much my only option. I moved out of home for the first time when I was 16, then again at 18, then again when I was 21. I’ve been paying either board at home or my own rent since my first job at McDonald’s when I was 14 years and nine months old.
I bombed my HSC (a mixed bag of spending too much time driving around with my friends and a tricky home life — my parents separated two weeks before my final exams) and ended up working for a couple of years alongside studying at night online to get enough credits to get into university and study journalism. I then studied full time while working two jobs to afford my rent, uni fees, the textbooks and petrol for the little Daihatsu Charade I drove from Camden to Penrith and back four times a week. Oh, and food! I also had to eat. Spag bol was the main event Sunday-Thursday. I’d make a huge batch and then warm it up each night.
Shopping at Vinnies or The Salvos for my clothes and furniture for my apartment was a reflection of my circumstances, not my taste. And while it was sad and hard and I often went without, this chapter of my life shaped me into the woman I am today. Without experiencing (relative) financial hardship, my heart wouldn’t be as big as it is and I don’t think my work would touch as many people as it does.
To summarise: I wasn’t particularly interesting or eclectic, I was just poor. But! I owned it.
I made wearing secondhand and vintage pieces part of my style identity. What I was wearing slowly became a discussion point with friends, and the incredible pieces I’ve found buried in the back corners of op shops or on the final page of a very specific online search listing have now become reference points for some of the important moments in my life.
Take the vintage a-line midi dress with French phrases all over it that I found while on a trip to Melbourne (my version of Carrie’s Dior newspaper print dress) for example. It ended up being the dress I randomly chose to wear the day my sisters and late mum threw me a surprise baby shower. I was about six months pregnant and still in complete disbelief I was actually going to get the thing I wanted more than anything in the world — a baby girl.
That dress is now stored warmly and safely in my core memory bank and I’ll never part with it.
Speaking of my late mum, op shopping was something we did together. It was our happy and calm place. We would wander around the big Vinnies in Narellan for hours on end, meeting in the middle every now and then to share our finds. She was the best person to op shop with because she was patient. It took as long as it took.
We were actually on our way to one of my favourite antique stores in Sydney, Mitchell Road Antique & Design Centre, when she told me the breast cyst she’d been keeping an eye on didn’t feel like a cyst anymore. I remember that moment so clearly. I was turning left onto Anzac Parade and I asked her the two questions I’d just learnt to ask after recording an episode of my podcast with stage four metastatic breast cancer survivor and all-round sweetheart, Teryll Brewer:
Is your nipple inverted?
Does the skin where the cyst is look like an orange peel?
She said yes to both and my heart sunk. I remember telling her let’s just enjoy today and we can go to the doctor tomorrow. We barely spoke as we wandered around, both knowing the long, hard and ultimately tragic path that lay ahead.
She passed in August last year and I now find myself going to antique stores and op shops just to feel closer to her. I picture her wandering along behind me, telling me she likes literally everything I pick up like she always used to.
My love for all things pre-loved and vintage only grew with my tax bracket. When I was a publisher working in fashion media, it was almost impossible to be the best-dressed person in the room although we all still strived to be that, of course. I was regularly sitting next to editors who were wearing head-to-toe new season Celine or Chanel. I was doing alright salary-wise but not that alright. So I turned to what I knew best and it was in this season of my life that my version of a power couple emerged: Pinterest and The Real Real.
I’d spend hours — and still do — cultivating a style mood on Pinterest, then turning to a reseller site to source the look.
And when I say hours, I really mean hours. It takes ages but that’s what makes it so fulfilling.
Shopping secondhand or vintage is a process to be in not an outcome to achieve. Just like running a marathon or working your way up to being able to smash out 20 burpees, it requires a lot of time out on the field, conditioning. Every time we browse, we are refining our eye and landing deeper into our individual taste and our knowing. Shopping secondhand or vintage requires… drum roll… resilience! Commitment! Marathon-not-a-sprint, etc, etc.
Eventually it gets to the point where you can walk into a store, scan the room and spot what is for you from a distance. It becomes instinctual.
Shopping preloved is a slow tease which can be unsatisfying at times, like when you’re 138284783 pages deep on a reseller site and you haven’t found anything, or, you travel out of your way to an op shop in an affluent area only to find it has been completely picked; but the sense of achievement, satisfaction and joy when you cross the finish line makes it all worth it. The finish line being a perfect piece at an outrageously good price.
The Dolce & Gabbana leopard bustier I bought from in 2017 is a finish line piece for me. Then there’s the Jil Sander pink satin kitten heels I wore to Australian Fashion Week in 2016 (fun fact, Lara Worthington DM’d be to say how perfect they were and it was like I’d crossed the finish line again). I also found the most amazing thick, heavy, gold chain necklace in Palm Springs in 2018. An ex-Who What Wear colleague and now Insta friend, Katrina Hellman, wears one almost exclusively — it’s her thing — and I wanted one so bad. I remember dragging Tony around in 40+ degree heat knowing I’d find one in Mitchells, and I did. All that time on the field… the senses, they get Spidey.
I recently wore a finish line piece to my friend Zoe’s birthday dinner at Restaurant Hubert ($$ but worth it for special occasions). It is a deep red velvet cowl neck dress I found at Zoo Emporium Vintage in Surry Hills a handful of years ago. One of those ones that felt too special to leave behind but not immediately obvious where or when I would wear it.
As soon as we booked the venue I knew it was destined for this very occasion. I wore it with black, over-the-knee Alexander Wang boots I bought on the side of the road from a fashion girl in Bondi in around 2016 and the gold heart pendant I bought from Tatah The Label at Bondi Markets (obsessed with her stuff). My new friend crush Sean was also there and he wore a recently thrifted sheer Jean Paul Gaultier top that had me frothing at the mouth. Zoe looked a trillion dollars in a white, backless sequined dress and we ate her cake by shoving our spoons directly into it. An utterly perfect evening made even richer by our finish line pieces.
We haven’t even gotten to home yet! I would actually say I buy more home items from op shops and antique stores than I do fashion. My coffee table is probably the finish line of all finish line finds. I found it in my second home, Mitchell Road, in 2018 and texted a picture of it to Tony. He hated it but I brought it home anyway. Years later my friend sent me a picture of a replica produced by a brand that follows me on Insta. Coincidence?! Maybe, but it’s those moments I remind Tony that I’m often early but rarely wrong. 😬
I find ceramics to be wildly underpicked in op shops. I find a new piece almost every time I walk into a store. On my last drop in to Salvos on Hall Street in Bondi, I found a ceramic tagine (something I’ve wanted for so long but never felt necessary) and a primordial (!) stone pen holder I now use for incense sticks. I’ve found gorgeous cups and vases. Last week in Bondi Junction I found two hair clips for $7 which might give some people the ick but I personally picture the women whose hair they’ve held back in hard times or moments of creating or building something and feel comforted by that.
Thrifting is about style but it’s mostly about story. It’s what we get to connect into when we choose to give something a second, third, fourth or fifth life. I think deeply about the energies and ideas imprinted on the fabric. I stare at the wear and tear and wonder what the person who owned it before me moved through and overcame. Wardrobe clean outs often come during or after big life events, initiations or transitions. We’re shopping what people believe they’ve evolved beyond and we’re buying what they held onto for so long but ultimately decided to let go of.
This is getting long. I was planning on taking you through my Pinterest system and how I cultivate a style mood before I go picking, but perhaps I’ll save that for another entry. I’d love to share my The Real Real and Vestiaire wish lists as well but you have to promise not to buy anything from them when I do. Intentional shopping requires longer consideration periods and in my mind, a lot of the pieces I’ve favourited already exist in my wardrobe.
Right now it's this red Gucci dress my eternally stylish friend Billie sent me as an option for her wedding. It feeling finish-liney… what do you think? It’s an investment but the lifers always are.
Alison xo