My prom dress, I dreamed it retro, including the fascinator with a veil and the gloves. I was 15 and my budget was $30; I found everything at Eva B, on the Hand (which still exists, a miracle). The black velvet dress lined in lilac satin—circa 1940s or 1950s—remained silent. I would have liked to know her story, her moments of glory, her secrets as a woman. I have always preferred clothes with a story, like a second skin that I would have adopted, a tale that has a twist.
Even today, I frequent thrift stores, “swaps”, with friends, second-hand sales. So much so that the prices of new clothes now seem prohibitive to me. I got used to paying $60 for a coat, $10 for pants, $5 for a shirt. The other day, I unearthed a cape in a locker, 100% wool and reversible, a piece of quality that you keep for life. “I’ve been selling mostly tops since the pandemic,” the thrift shop told me. Zoom meetings have revolutionized wardrobes. The cape is worn less.
There has been a lot of talk about clothing and one of the most polluting industries in the world — fashion — in recent years. It was time. There fast fashion is pointed out, we become aware of the environmental impact, the consumption of materials and water of our clothes. Producing a cotton t-shirt requires 2700 liters of water, the amount a person will drink in two and a half years. For jeans, it’s 10,000 liters, half a swimming pool. At a time when blue gold is becoming an issue, we will have to choose between our lettuces and our look.
Fashion fades, only style remains
But the most staggering figure comes from the documentary Generation Rewear, produced by Vanish (a detergent brand in Great Britain) and the British Fashion Council: we produce 100 billion pieces of clothing per year on the planet (of which 10 to 30% will never be worn and will be destroyed), but we we already have enough clothes to dress the next six generations of human beings. I say that, I say nothing, but perhaps following fashion becomes superfluous for the next 150 years?
second-hand generation
Generation Z, that of my son and his friends, is reputed to have adhered to the image of second-hand clothing. They adopted this style, both vintage (late XXe century, roughly) and “artsy”. And they appreciate the fact of having an exclusivity, the models being available in a single copy.
For generations X and Y, second-hand clothing has become a way of finding bargains, asserting one’s originality, creating events. Artists have always been loyal customers of thrift stores. My friend Maude, a 33-year-old choreographer, tattoo artist and dancer, created “Les cossins à Gigi” (lescossinsagigi on Instagram or Facebook) during the pandemic and she sells clothes for fun. “I’ve always freaked out. I started when I was 12: second-hand clothes, tam-tams and sandwiches at Santropol. I was going on a treasure hunt. It became a passion, I dressed my friends, I created happenings. »
Last winter, Maude organized a thrift store pop up : “Cocoa, tarot and cossins” in the coldest winter with friends. I left with fawn pattern leggings (I hate fawn patterns, too!) and suede pants. A gang of “roots” and tattooed girls in their thirties chatted sitting on sofas, drinking bitter hot chocolate and commenting on the clothes tried on by each other. That’s how you spend a quiet January Saturday in the country: chatting rags and being drawn at cards.
“I don’t really make any money with it, but I have fun,” says Maude. And then the impact of fashion is disastrous. I can’t believe we’re still buying new. You have to rehabilitate. Me, I’m looking for clothes with a story in church basements, I want a soul, a fabric, color, and made in Canada. I find amazing stuff! »
Outremont, prout-cheap
Recently, I found myself at a half-end, half-thrift sale in Outremont, $10 contribution to a neighborhood cause and a glass of bubbles while trying on some barely worn clothes. On Sunday, everything was on sale at $10. The organizer preferred the word “vintage”, but it does not apply to clothing from this century. I suggest the “unhook me-that”, a word with hinges that sounds pretty prout-my-dear.
I went there with my friend Sophie, a Gen X, a second-hand pro since her twenties and who knows all the brands. ” The truth trip for me, it’s the freedom to find and reinvent. To juxtapose older cuts, colors, to rediscover styles that I wouldn’t be offered in standard chains. Walking in a mall, we are offered the same haircut everywhere. This season, the pants are worn high and wide at the bottom and the sweater in cropped top. And she notices that those who were ashamed of their used purchases and other garage sale bargains are bragging about it today.
Fashion is the most irresistible and effective method of manipulating large human collectives
“I love clothes, I have a sense of body and design, continues Sophie, I love beautiful fabrics, creating and daring. And then, it’s a creation that is not nourished by the dictates of a fashion based on quick sales. I can’t even imagine the life of the person who sewed my sleeve. »
Sophie has the instincts of a hunter and organizes annual exchanges where we bring our clothes to sell at $10 a piece. These meetings end in party of girls, ginto and crisps, in bras in the yard. And the “unsold” are redirected to charity. The cycle begins again. The second hand becomes third or fourth hand. And these second-hand clothes friends, doubled as stylists and clothing advisers, allow us to accept ourselves, to be better in our slightly wrinkled skin too.
“Making an event or going there with a friend is a party,” notes Sophie. Our bodies change, we rediscover each other, we advise each other, we try, we laugh. Worse, we leave having dared a little. It makes you happy, the second hand. »