Flying home from the annual consignment, resale, and thrift industry Conference I had a few hours in Atlanta so I checked my email, Sharing on TGtbT.com, and so on, blithely spewing (more…)
Archive for the ‘Slices of (my) life’ Category
How Strong are YOUR Passwords?
Posted in Shopkeeping talk, Slices of (my) life on July 24, 2009| 1 Comment »
Love Loss and What I Wore: The Giveaway
Posted in Slices of (my) life on July 14, 2009| 10 Comments »
Just finished reading the book by Ilene Beckerman by that title, and realized that I too remember what I was wearing when.
Ilene uses her whimsical illustrations to tell her life story. While I can’t draw, I can remember. And when I start to, I am astonished at how much I do remember about my wardrobe over the years.
I remember:
The little blue (more…)
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom
Posted in Slices of (my) life on May 9, 2009| 7 Comments »
Big brother Rick, your humble correspondent and Mom, Southampton Beach Long Island, 1950's.
Mothers are complicated. And they don’t get less so, for having gone to that great mudroom in the sky.
So Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Thanks for leading me on my career path, thanks for the sense of humor and love of nature. Thanks for Sunday (more…)
Whatever happened to May Day?
Posted in Slices of (my) life, tagged kidswear on May 1, 2009| 2 Comments »
W
hen I was a tot, we celebrated May Day. We made little mini-baskets out of woven construction paper, put a few spring blossoms and a loving note in them, and hung them on friend’s door knobs early in the morning (or put them on their stoops if we didn’t get up early enough to claim the coveted door knob spot).
Such a nice tradition…
I even remember (more…)
How this consignment story takes me back!
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, Slices of (my) life, Used Stuff in the News on March 21, 2009| 5 Comments »
Back in the 1950’s and the ’60’s and even later, it was not at all uncommon for a woman to have little or no spending money under her private control.
This was brought home to me as the only girl-child of a fiercely independent woman, most vividly in my mother’s consignment shops.
One of my mother’s shops, called Pin Money, was in Roslyn, an affluent New York suburb. I started going to “the shop” with Mom when I was just 8. I loved to eavesdrop on my mother dealing with her consignors as I swept the dust-bunnies from under the racks, straightened hangers on the back porch, or lined the index cards on which consignment records were kept.
“What do you need?” the ladies would ask my mother. They stood there in their lovely expensive chic ensembles, with matching hosiery, shoes, even gloves, and asked my mother in her wraparound Madras skirt. They’d take out a little gilt notepad with a cunning little mechanical pencil attached (how I lusted after those!) from their alligator handbags and write down “size 12 lavender tweed suit” or “Jantzen swim ensemble, greens mostly, size 8” and off they would go.
The next time I saw them, they were picking up the proceeds from the sale of these items. They had gone directly to Bonwit Teller’s or Saks or Bergdorf Goodman from my mother’s consignment shop, there to purchase on their husband’s charge accounts specific items…then back to Pin Money to
consign…on demand.
These women were controlled by their husbands, my mother explained to a wide-eyed little girl, by being given very little money of their own. But, on the other hand, they had free access to their husband’s house charge accounts at local stores. So, for these women to have even a modicum of freedom and privacy on how they spent their money, they would charge a sure-seller on their husbands’ accounts, consign it, and receive a small portion back in cash.
While their husbands blissfully shelled out hundreds, the wives tucked mere twenties into those reptile-and-gilt handbags.
As a matter of fact the very name of my mother’s businesses, Pin Money Shops, was a reflection of that era. Pin Money is the term for money given by a husband to his wife for private and personal expenditures. So Pin Money, the shop, served to supplement, her personal expenditures for some women with clueless husbands. Makes you view “Mad Men” in a new light, doesn’t it?
Another definition of pin money is “a small amount of extra money earned to buy small luxuries”, which is much more gender-neutral, but not near as much fun.
Vintage handbag photo from vintageskins.com which has some great stuff.The Blog of
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