OCT 3, 2024 | FEATURES | By Brett LeVan
This past summer, as I walked the streets of Bruges, Belgium, I entered a department store with the intent of buying one pair of jeans and one going out top. I had packed sparingly for my two months in Europe and knew I would find what I was seeking easily and quickly in such a store. The month prior, while in London, I tried desperately to find Goodwill-like thrift stores, but I failed utterly and instead walked through expensive and trendy vintage stores with no intention of purchasing anything.
As I walked the streets of Bruges, I was on one of the two days off I had each week while working on a farm just on the other side of the border in the Netherlands; while my wardrobe consisted mostly of overalls and tank tops, I was spending the night in Bruges and wanted a ‘going out’ top…a silly excuse I am now ashamed of as I write this article.
If you know anything about me, (or you’ve read my previous thrifting article), you know I would rather scrounge through rows and rows of thrifted clothes before I would ever think of buying them first-hand, especially at an H&M.
My travels (either solo, with friends or with my family) aren’t spent buying tickets to tourist sites or standing in lines at amusement parks, rather they’re spent seeking out local thrift stores to either be utterly disappointed or enthralled. I have concluded that no other space encapsulates a community more than the thrift stores that fill their towns.
In my opinion, the people in thrift stores often represent the community or city where that thrift store is located, but the clothes that fill the racks represent the people even more so. For example, thrift stores in certain places don’t often have racks specifically for farming clothes or clearly loved Dickies pants. But my small-town local thrift store back home in Newton, Kansas has just that — an entire rack of only well-loved, worn-in, paint-covered and hole-filled Dickies pants and those are such a score. Let me tell you about people watching in thrift stores because, in my opinion, nothing compares.
Thrift stores are where you find the shirt of a prepubescent middle schooler who outgrew their niche, a local soccer club. Or the DIY self-cut tank tops which have outgrown their trend era: probably for the better. Or the same thrift stores in Tampa, Fla. while visiting my grandparents which always have the same beachy clothing rack that somehow grasps my attention even though I live nowhere near water. Can you get away with wearing beachy clothes in Kansas? I don’t think so.
Little trinkets from my travels don’t find a home in my carry-on, rather I fill my extra tote bag to the brim with thrifted (inexpensive) clothes which have a specific location associated with them from then on.
Whether it be the dress from Stockholm when I worked on a farm for three months two summers ago or the jean jacket from Barcelona when I spontaneously flew from Sweden to visit a friend and her mom. Or the little “watermelon top,” (my boyfriend’s name for it) from Brighton, England when I took the “Shakespeare in London” course earlier this summer. Or the pants on pants from various Colorado thrift stores or the golf scene sweater (you’ll get a kick if you ever see it) from San Antonio, Texas when my dad and brother went to the Alamo Bowl last winter. Or the green “old lady” dress suit set from back home in Kansas, or even the seashell earrings from Moab, Utah. Then, of course, there are all the sweaters I get each time my grandma purges her closet. People say, “hair holds memories.” I say, “clothes hold memories.”
However, I want to make it clear that I am not lumping overpriced vintage stores into my love for secondhand shops. I am talking about the thrift stores where nothing is over $10, and you leave with aromas of “thrift.” The best smell in the world, in my opinion.
To find something in an entirely different country or state knowing the last person who wore it had a whole life in it before it either filled their closet without purpose or simply became too small, is why shopping secondhand trumps buying new every time.
The joy of buying secondhand is that there aren’t multiple sizes of the same pair of jeans or going out tops, and there isn’t certainty in finding treasures, yet being able to say my entire wardrobe is almost entirely thrifted (minus the clothes I wear for dance because I am very specific about those) feels pretty good.
And don’t get me wrong, I know I am one of many, thousands and even millions who seek second-hand stores over department stores, but if this article can be any sort of inspiration for at least one person to ditch department stores and shop secondhand then let it be such an article. You will most certainly find the gold at the end of the rainbow.