About

Finding beauty in the ordinary.

“Loving yourself is an act of rebellion.”

or put more fully:

“…perhaps capitalism is only the most efficient means of fulfilling a population’s physical needs — needs for food, shelter, clothing, etc. Because in a capitalist system, it also becomes economical to feed into everyone’s insecurities, their vices and vulnerabilities, to promote their worst fears and constantly remind them of their shortcomings and failures. It becomes profitable to set new and unrealistic standards, to generate a culture of comparison and inferiority. Because people who constantly feel inferior make the best customers.” ~ Mark Manson

Thrifting began, for me, as a necessity. Growing up poor, like many people where I’m from, my family often shopped at stores like Goodwill, Salvation Army, flea markets, and the like. It became like a treasure hunt; what gem can you find in the rough? What jewel can you salvage from the wreckage? As I got older and into high school, it suddenly became popular for kids my age to shop at thrift shops for authentic vintage tops, so now the rich kids and I looked like we were on the same plane. The only difference was theirs was by choice.

I started developing my own style when I was in my final year of high school, when I felt that things were becoming too generic and nothing in the stores was special. On top of that, I was diagnosed with scoliosis, and felt like a lot of clothes were not fitted to a body that was outside the norm. When I went to college to study apparel and costume design, I wrote a paper on how off the rack clothing _ does _ not _ fit _ any _ body, especially those with physical differences, but how tailored clothing can change your self-perception. I learned to tailor, drape, and pattern clothing in all sorts of fun and interesting ways, and it was tremendously gratifying.

However, we also learned about the production side of the garment industry. How a young woman who was undeniably the best seamstress at a certain factory was asked to work 12 hour days for 6 straight days to complete a large order, even though she was 9 months pregnant. Also, how Walmart’s children’s clothing is not flame-retardant as the law demands it should be, but how they get around it by importing it under a different codes. How in countries like Bangladesh and India, there are laws regulating how much waste chemicals can be legally dumped within range of major cities, but neglects to consider the people living on the outskirts of town, a majority of whom live in poverty. And how fast fashion was the “new and exciting thing” for clothing companies. This was taught to us as a sad-but-necessary evil, but I found the whole system deplorable.

After one internship in the costuming business at an opera house in New Jersey, I decided the industry wasn’t for me. However, the skills I learned as a seamstress are invaluable to me. Sewing from scratch is a rewarding (though expensive) process, but even now that I make my own money, I still enjoy the thrift hunt. It’s more ethical than sweat shops and factories, less harmful on the environment in so many ways (less pollution from production and shipping, less waste in landfills, etc.), and I get to save money. The thing I like most is that I can find something rare, or reinvent a tired garment, and have something totally unique and one of a kind. I always know that no one else is going to be wearing the exact same thing as me. The point is, we don’t have to buy the ideas we’re sold about what we need to own, and how often we need to upgrade our possessions.

We can be rebellious.

~Madeleine Alexis