Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Headline from a newspaper article on shopping consignment:

Fashion on a budget: You’d never know by looking at her

Comment on a parenting blog:

You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but about 90% of what Punky and Bruiser wear came from consignment sales.

Do people really think those who shop consignment or resale will look “different”? And if they will, is that not a good thing?

Because who wants to look like every other mall-fashionista in the country? Sometimes it seems that people’s styles are basically interchangeable, thanks to the malling of America? Because those without the imagination to dress themselves, are being dressed by less than a half-dozen chain store entities.

You can’t tell Jennifer from Ashley from Amanda. They are all wearing the same clothes, clothes chosen for them by some wholesale buyer, touted in the fashion magazines, and over-priced because, after all, it costs money to persuade them to all wear the same thing. (If I see one more baby-doll top on a 27-year-old woman, I won’t be responsible for what I do.)

Ah, but the savvy secondhand shopper? Now there’s a vision for sore eyes. She (and the occasional he) doesn’t have to settle for this year’s “in” color, this season’s “how new item”, the style dictates of some anorexic Manhattanite who can’t get over herself in . The shopper with style chooses her handbag by her own taste, not by which was seen on the arm of some hype-ridden actress standing on Rodeo Drive waiting for the paparazzi to catch up with her.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but those who have their own style…shop anywhere they darn well choose. And if that’s not Gap or Saks, Macy’s or A&F…more power to them. Everyone is born an original…it takes imagination and self-esteem not to become a carbon copy.