Photos of these items and more can be found here. This is my favourite line-up to date; I am so very in love with the sailor-girl collar dresses, beautiful silky floral prints, the high quality pure wool knits, flamenco red ruffles, timepiece print dress-shirts ....aahhh!
There is a robust, healthy body of Canberran thrift stores that seems to get more and more fantastic and full of beautiful, thoughtfully detailed discarded & donated clothing that I don't think I could ever even use my essay-writing brain or fingers to conceive or make. It is intriguing to me how a drop-waist or a certain polyester blend or even a font on a label instantly communicates quite lucidly something of the era in which the item was manufactured and gives it a precious value based on its 'survival' and potential for re-usability. It's certainly nothing new to say that fashion trends are recycled and certain stylistic features are directly copied or reproduced time after time, and op-shopping undoubtedly reinforces this. Op shopping is a wonderful embodiment of this nostalgic tendency and sentimentality; current trends are derived from styles in preceding years and these much-coveted styles can be found in the unassuming, quiet, volunteer-run thrift stores that I like so much. It is often very hard to pull myself out of a store until after my arms have developed deep red, painful coathanger impressions from carrying around so many items! I am not exactly sure why I find it so impossible to enter one without looking through every single item on the racks, but I think it may have to do with the lure of happening across something really special. Also it is way too exciting and satisfying to reconstruct and give new relevance to clothes that may otherwise sit with unused potential. Gosh, what a mouthful! Too much talking. {And yet it won't stop quite here...}
On another note, with a very busy uni schedule as final assessments coming up aaaand an impending trip to Indonesia for fieldschool, it was hard to list 40 items this week, so I kept it to a very exclusive bunch of 25 all-star items. All stars! Yup. Check them out? I hope you like them as much as i love them?
There is a robust, healthy body of Canberran thrift stores that seems to get more and more fantastic and full of beautiful, thoughtfully detailed discarded & donated clothing that I don't think I could ever even use my essay-writing brain or fingers to conceive or make. It is intriguing to me how a drop-waist or a certain polyester blend or even a font on a label instantly communicates quite lucidly something of the era in which the item was manufactured and gives it a precious value based on its 'survival' and potential for re-usability. It's certainly nothing new to say that fashion trends are recycled and certain stylistic features are directly copied or reproduced time after time, and op-shopping undoubtedly reinforces this. Op shopping is a wonderful embodiment of this nostalgic tendency and sentimentality; current trends are derived from styles in preceding years and these much-coveted styles can be found in the unassuming, quiet, volunteer-run thrift stores that I like so much. It is often very hard to pull myself out of a store until after my arms have developed deep red, painful coathanger impressions from carrying around so many items! I am not exactly sure why I find it so impossible to enter one without looking through every single item on the racks, but I think it may have to do with the lure of happening across something really special. Also it is way too exciting and satisfying to reconstruct and give new relevance to clothes that may otherwise sit with unused potential. Gosh, what a mouthful! Too much talking. {And yet it won't stop quite here...}
On another note, with a very busy uni schedule as final assessments coming up aaaand an impending trip to Indonesia for fieldschool, it was hard to list 40 items this week, so I kept it to a very exclusive bunch of 25 all-star items. All stars! Yup. Check them out? I hope you like them as much as i love them?
