The thrift shop occupies a unique place in our cultural iconography. It is where you can outfit yourself and your home on a tight budget. It is where goods in our disposable society can find a second life. It’s where one can experience surprise and excitement in a low-cost, low-risk environment. It is one of the few sites left that cannot be accessed online; one must visit in person to rifle through the racks and search the shelves for treasure.
Thrift shops can be large or small, populist or elitist. There are carefully curated thrift shops that sell Birkin bags and Chanel suits for thousands of dollars (still well below retail price), and those that dump everything together in unsorted heaps and smell like a basement.
Thrifting requires a good eye—the ability to discern quality amid junk. I have a collection of bowls and vases that I found for $2 each and which grace the top of my dining room cabinet. It’s amazing how something seemingly lackluster can become beautiful when dusted off and given a space of its own.
If you don’t have taste already, thrift shops can help you develop it. A fellow English prof I know said he learned about material and craftsmanship by frequenting thrift shops. He is now as knowledgeable about good tailoring as he is about poetic scansion.
I like to say that thrifting, as a form of recycling, reduces our carbon footprint. But the truth is that I thrift less out of virtue than aesthetic yearning: a desire to find something extraordinary that I never knew I wanted until I stumbled across it in a thrift shop. I elaborate myself through these objects. It is an endless quest for the holy grail of self-completion.
Over time, my wardrobe has become entirely thrifted, and I like to boast that my outfit, shoes to hat, cost me only $20. Since I regularly “curate” my closets and donate what I no longer wear, I sometimes come across my own things in thrift shops and have been known to buy them back.
When I visit another city, I will check out its thrift shops; it’s a way of capturing the spirit of the place. One learns about people by what they discard. I like to imagine who once wore the size 5 Cole Hahn shoes that I found in D.C. for $4, or the boho embroidered blouse, reminiscent of my youth and labeled “vintage,” that I scooped up in Pennsauken, New Jersey for $8.
I like to go to thrift shops when I’m feeling anxious or depressed. The benign suspense there calms my nerves. Part of the pleasure involves interacting with other shoppers: asking the woman next to me in the un-curtained changing room whether the dress I’ve managed to shimmy on makes me look fat. Only in a thrift shop will I be told: “Yes, it shows your bulges.” People in thrift shops tend to tell the truth; that alone makes thrift shops worth frequenting.
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Art by Lara Schaberg
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