One of the best lessons my friend Maximilano taught me, was that if you have style you don’t need to spend lots of money to look good. Designers create beautiful clothes and make it easy for the rest of humanity to look half descent, and that is why their clothing is so expensive; but if you know yourself, know your body and were born with the gift of taste, you can actually tell designers “thank you but no thanks”. Don’t get me wrong I love designer clothing as much as the next shallow and egocentric guy does, I just don’t think that brands are the only way to keep it fab.
If you trust your taste and you like adventure Goodwill is a great place to go. Hamden’s Goodwill (2369 Dixwell Ave.) is one of the smaller goodwill in the area, but there is still plenty to keep you busy, hunting and digging for a while. The store has clothing, books, music, movies and housewares, some appliances and a few small pieces of furniture. Most of the stuff seems to be in good shape, but when you are buying used stuff you have to be open to do some fixing up.
This are my 10 personal rules to used clothing hunting:
- Be patient, you don’t run into a Chanel black dress by just looking through the first rack, you need to spend some time here.
- Get into it, dig your fingers into those hangers, move stuff around and don’t skip, skipping is bad.
- Don’t look for your size, look for things you like. If you are a medium and you are only looking at mediums you are missing out on great clothes in other sizes that you could potentially fix to fit.
- Think creatively, try to imagine the clothes as part of an outfit, try to imagine a belt on it, a jacket on top, see beyond what you are holding.
- Imagine an ocation and put an outift together. Dinner at Mandy’s, wine at the park, movie night. That will get your creativity running and will help you focus your browsing.
- Don’t waste your time on t-shirts unless that is exactly what you are looking for. T-shirts don’t survive time too well, usually when the collar goes there is not much to do there, so unless you are under 20, or really need a t-shirt with a ragged look to it, stay away from them.
- Spend time with coats and jackets. Even if it is summer time, coats are expensive and you can find here some timeless pieces of vintage clothing. Coats usually survive time beautifully so spend some quality time there.
- Shoes can be fixed. Remember that guy that used to get helped by some fabulously crafty elves (am I the only one smelling gay right there?), well he still exist, google a shoemaker in your area.
- Try the clothes on. Even if you know you need to fix it, you need a realistic assessment of how much fixing the clothe needs, so get over your embarrassment and try it on.
- Go around again. Re-visit the racks you are more interested in because there is a good chance you missed stuff.
I promise you’ll have fun doing this. If you don’t feel like buying used clothes you still should visit the store and check out their housewares section; you can find there glass bowls for 99 cents, decorations for a dollar, or restaurant dishes for $2. I don’t know you but I love the feeling of a good bargain, and at the Goodwill you can certainly find plenty of those. Now if you are too good for used stuff, good for you, we need people stimulating the economy so just go ahead and spend your cash.
Great post. Don’t forget all those cool trashy paperbacks that seem to always end up at the Goodwill. Stuff like Sin in the Suburbs or I Was a Beatnik for the FBI or How to Pick Up Chicks the Barnabas Collins Way. Love those books! Also lots of good vinyl records. Dig past all the Polka Party LP’s, Oklahoma soundtracks, and John Denver collections, and you can find music both bizarre and fun. If you like the whole 1950′s tiki culture you can usually find some Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, or Les Baxter exotica. Who wouldn’t want to relax in your backyard after a hard day at your 1950′s grey flannel suit businessman job, drinking a Mai Tai and listening to “Quiet Village”? How about some comedy? I have found classics from Redd Foxx, Don Rickles, Bob Newhart, and Bill Cosby. Want to test out your sound system? I love those Quadraphonic Stereo Demonstration records, you know, the ones with all the sounds that pan from speaker to speaker. If you have a space age bachelor pad you need to impress with your hi-fi. Lastly, there are those unexpected rarities that make collector scum wet their unwashed pants. I found original Beatles, Joy Division, Chrome, Kraftwerk, and countless other treasure that have spun around my antiquated phonograph. Keep digging in those crates!
I go to Goodwill all the time- mainly for books and housewares. Someone has the same taste in books that I do and donates all the time, so I find a lot of ‘like new’ books for $1-2. Yeah, and the trashy summer reads, the weekend novels- 99 cents! In housewares, I found VERY LITTLE USED pieces from my Pfaltzkraft (sp? I’m too lazy to look) pattern (Cityscape, if you’re curious-very Frank Lloyd Wright). Since plates are around $10, I enjoyed getting them for around $1. As far as clothes go, I have found designer silk blouses (with tags), pants, blazers… if you know what you’re looking at, and take the time, you can find a great deal! I think a lot of people are like me- buy something because it’s a good price, or whatever reason, never wear it, and donate it.