Growing up, most of my clothes weren’t new. Buying designer labels or buying clothes from department stores was a joke. The vast majority of my clothes were either from my older sisters or thrift stores. That was okay, but I wish it was okay with others.
However, when I was younger it didn’t feel so okay. I used to be a pretty self-conscious kid and in school, clothes mattered. I didn’t go to school in a very rich neighborhood but it was enough for kids to brag about their Nikes and Abercrombie & Fitch clothes. And that was enough to make kids who couldn’t afford that noticeable and vulnerable. Disguising the fact that my clothes were from thrift stores and keeping a low profile was important to me. I don’t necessarily agree with school uniforms but I know reasons like this is one of the main arguments for why they exist.
I’ve talked to people before that have never set foot in a thrift store, the idea disgusted them. I mean sure, you’re buying clothes that strangers wore, but for me I kind of had to just get over it. But hearing people’s opinions of thrift stores worried me. If thrift stores disgusted them, did people like me that got all their clothes there disgust them too? I hoped not.
When Macklemore’s hit song Thrift Shop came out, people romanticized thrift stores and thought they were cool and trendy again. A goldmine for their hipster outfits. Thrift stores became fashionable for a hot minute, but for me that was just a way of life. I rolled my eyes at the leadership kids making parody Thrift Shop music videos in Goodwills and Value Villages, coming to pep assemblies in huge, crazy thrift store “costumes”. I knew that’s not what it was like shopping at thrift stores. It was a trend idolizing the thrift store but also mocking it, it wasn’t the way things actually were.
Most of my clothes aren’t flashy or trendy enough to notice, but occasionally I’ll still get that offhand compliment/question from someone – “Where’d you get it?” I thought sometimes about how to answer this. Would people look down on me if I simply said, “Goodwill”? Sometimes I’d find some name brand gem in a thrift store and think, “Oh sweet, this is American Eagle, (or Aeropostle, or Levi) I can totally just tell people I got it there if they ask.”
Getting hand-me-downs was even better though. Those clothes were always trendier and it felt a lot more comforting knowing they were from my sister than from strangers. Telling people I got clothes from my sisters didn’t make me so nervous either.
I don’t want sympathy for being a little poor kid, I just hope you understand this is what I have to do. I’ve come to really accept it. I’m a thrift shopper, part of that culture, and there will be fashion cultures I’ll never be a part of. There will always be trends I don’t understand, clothes I can’t imagine spending money on, stores I’ll never know. That’s okay, as long as you understand there’s nothing wrong with me, nothing gross, nothing weird, just a different way of life.
I don’t look down on people that buy expensive, designer clothes, I just hope they don’t look down on me.
