The Cool Cycle
If you want to stay fashion-relevant, look away
Welcome to my very first newsletter! If you don’t know me yet, we’ll get into all of that in good time. (Long story short, I worked at a fashion magazine for over a decade, I now co-host a beauty podcast, I have a skincare line in the works for smart, well-lived women around my age, I’m a mother, dog-mum, wife, friend, extraverted introvert and otherwise fairly self-actualized individual.)
But this first newsletter is dedicated to one of my longtime passions, vintage! Little known fact, I worked at a thrift shop in university. There, I would find the cutest, most random stuff. Lacy camisoles I’d wear dancing to house music at clubs like 23 Hop, an Al Pacino-style leather jacket I wore on my first day of uni (my late friend Patrick used to call it my “you can’t understand me jacket,”) a posh, navy blue crocodile bag that I left on the shelf – a miscalculation that still haunts me.
Ironically, the fashion trends we see online are so often a byproduct of broke young girls dipping into their mother’s closet. Take the Balenciaga city bag that Kate the waif toted around in the early aughts, now resurrected by Gen Z. Ditto the LV Speedy, now replete with Hello Kitty charms. Designers gain inspiration from the youth, and the cycle continues.
Perhaps a decade from now, my daughter will pull out my Chanel tuxedo jacket and think of me, remembering that I acquired it at a sample sale for 90% off, the last that the house would ever host. That I was an editor lucky enough to partake in such frivolous things. That I was utterly unlike my parents who had pulled themselves up from humble coal miner and communist beginnings to award me the privilege that she herself now enjoys. That I am a writer, with deep thoughts on what we see on the surface.
No matter how rich or flukey the story behind a beautiful garment may be, it’s time for us to own where we stand in the turnwheel of cool. At the top. If you want to know where fashion is going next, one need only reach to the very back of your own closet, or my favourite, shop from a curated thrift shop that isn’t as time-consuming as Goodwill and not as pricey as designer consignment.
Is it made well? Is it an interesting fabric? A devastatingly good print? Does it flatter the figure? Can you remix it in a way that’s different from the way you wore it the first time around? And best of all, did it not cost you a month’s worth of mortgage payment? If you answered yes to these questions, you’re winning. And perhaps somewhere in here, there’s a lesson in not discarding what once and will forever be cool, be it clothes or the people who wear them.
Do you have a favourite curated thrift shop in your hometown? Drop the names below so the rest of us can tuck in on our next visit!
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I love vintage shopping! There’s a place in Frisco (east of Dallas) called The Refind that I have been wanting to check out. You’ve inspired me to do it!