I took the L to Bedford on Saturday with a mission: thrifting fall coats before every other person in Brooklyn had the same idea. I was too late, obviously. Everyone had the same idea.
The L Train Vintage on North 6th was already packed by eleven. There is a specific breed of Williamsburg shopper who arrives at opening with the focus of a surgeon, and I respect them, and I am becoming one of them.
Here is what I've learned about thrifting fall coats in New York: you go for the wool. Forget the trendy nylon stuff. The old wool coats from the 70s and 80s were built to survive a New York winter and outlive their owners. The construction is unreal. The shoulders. The weight of them.
I found a camel wool coat. Real camel, that warm biscuit color, single-breasted, with these beautiful covered buttons and a label so faded I couldn't read it. Forty dollars. Forty. In my industry I've held sample coats that cost more than my rent and felt half as good in the hand.
A woman was eyeing it. I moved with the speed of a Chennai Express train. Sorry, not sorry. All's fair in thrifting.
This is the part of my fashion work that keeps me sane. My day job is beautiful but it's fast — new collections, new trends, everything discarded in six months. Thrifting fall coats reminds me that clothes can have a whole life before you, and a whole life after.
Sustainability isn't a hashtag for me. It's growing up watching my mother remake her old saris into salwar suits, into cushion covers, into nothing wasted ever. That woman never threw away a piece of fabric in her life. I carry that into every rack I dig through.
I walked back to the L with my camel coat over my arm, feeling like I'd won something. The wind on Bedford was already sharp enough to justify it.
Buy the old coat. Someone loved it first, and now it's your turn.
Love,