People think thrifting is glamorous. People are wrong.
Thrifting in a heatwave for a Fashion Week styling job is, specifically, a form of penance. I took the L to Jefferson Street on Monday when it was 95 degrees and the platform felt like a tandoor.
But we needed pieces. Real pieces. My stylist lead wanted a look built entirely from secondhand — a whole story about slow fashion for a small presentation next month — and that meant hitting every vintage spot in Bushwick before closing.
Thrifting for Fashion Week is nothing like thrifting for yourself. You're not shopping your taste. You're hunting a silhouette that lives in someone else's head, and you have to find it in a bin that smells faintly of basement.
L Train Vintage on Wilson. Urban Jungle. That maze of a warehouse where the racks go on forever and your arms give out before your hope does.
I found it at hour four. A 1970s hand-embroidered kaftan, the kind of mirror-work that reminded me so much of the fabric stores in Ahmedabad that I actually gasped out loud in the store.
Seventeen dollars. Seventeen. It's going to be the centerpiece.
The thing about thrifting for Fashion Week is that the best finds feel like the universe handing you a gift. That kaftan had a whole life before me — someone bought it, loved it, let it go. Now it gets a second act on a runway.
That's the part I never get tired of. Nothing in fashion should be disposable. Every piece I pull from a Bushwick rack was made by hands, and it deserves better than a landfill.
I dragged three garment bags back onto the L, sweating through my own outfit, standing the whole ride because sitting would've wrinkled the goods.
A teenager complimented the kaftan poking out of the bag. I told her seventeen dollars and watched her whole worldview shift.
Thrifting for Fashion Week reminded me why I do this at all. Not the labels. The stories.
The best clothes have already lived a little.
Love,