When I was a little girl, my mother took me thrift store shopping constantly. We dug through racks of dresses, tops and bottoms together, brand new designer pieces mixed in with falling apart cast-offs. For a glorious six years or so, I was too young to recognize the status difference between shopping at Goodwill, and shopping at GapKids. Many times, Mom would "upcycle" our new finds, courtesy of puff paint or tie dye (this was the '80s, after all).
But as I got older, and the girl cliques at my school drew harder lines between socio-economic levels, I quickly got the idea that it wasn't "cool" to shop at Goodwill. I begged my mother to take me to Limited Too instead, where I could shop for clothes that were up to par with my peers. In short, I asked her to buy me clothes that would make me look like everybody else.
I'm not sure when everything came full circle, but somewhere around my early 20s, I fell back in love with the venerable thrift store. My local Buffalo Exchange is the first place I hit up when I go shopping, and as I type this post, I'm wearing a 100% thrifted outfit. I am grateful to Mom for teaching me all of her tricks as a kid, and have become a regular reader of thrift-happy blogs. One of my favorites isThe Year of Living Thriftily, written by vintage stylist Sarah Dean. For one year, Sarah (a mother herself) pledged to wear - aside from knickers - no new clothing, and photographed herself in her fabulous thrifted finds.
Since thrifted clothing is the greenest there is, wh
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