I went thrifting in Williamsburg on Saturday and came home with a coat that has a stranger's name in it, and I haven't stopped thinking about her since.
The L train was packed, obviously. It's always the L on a Saturday, everyone heading to Bedford with the same tote bag and the same look of mild self-importance. Me included, let's be honest. I had my work bag and my eye on a specific vintage spot near Metropolitan.
Thrifting in NYC is a sport. It is not relaxing. You dig. You sweat. You hold things up to the light and lie to yourself about whether they fit. But the payoff is real — a wool coat from the seventies, structured shoulders, this gorgeous rust color that's basically impossible to find new without paying a brand four hundred dollars to fake it.
And inside, hand-stitched into the lining: Marguerite.
I work in fashion. I see how the sausage is made. The waste is genuinely obscene — sample sales, deadstock, perfectly good fabric in landfills because a color didn't 'test well.' So thrifting isn't just a vibe for me, it's the closest thing I have to a clear conscience in this industry.
But Marguerite got me. Who was she? Did she love this coat? Did she walk through some other version of this city in it, decades ago, before the L train had countdown clocks and the Bedford stop had a line out the door?
That's the part the fast-fashion machine can never replicate. History. A garment that already lived a life before it found yours.
My mom keeps her wedding sari folded in tissue paper in a steel trunk. Same energy. Clothes that mean something get kept, get passed down, get loved twice.
So I'm keeping the name. I'm not removing it. Marguerite and I share a coat now.
Thrifting in Williamsburg isn't about finding cheap clothes. It's about finding clothes that already know how to be loved.
What's the oldest thing in your closet, and who wore it first?
Love,