Second hand shopping - the lowdown
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Second hand shopping - the lowdown |
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Jessica Hannan explains what to look for and where to find it: To be ignorant of eBay is you must have spent the last few years in a comatose state in the rainforest. Everyone knows an eBay addict, and most of us would have tried it at least once. Clothes and shoes make up 11% of the items sold on the site, second only to collectables with 17% of the sales. (2) Auctioning fashion online is serious business. Even celebrities are hooked; addicts include Sophie Ellis Bextor who has purchased amongst clothes, a pinball machine and a huge plastic ice-cream cone. Lindsay Lohan is known to stock up on hats and sunglasses. (3) Vintage isn’t the only fashion fare up for auction. As an attempt to raise eBay's fashion quotient, they hired Constance White, formally Elle magazine editor and style reporter of the New York Times. Her job is too find designers who want to sell their work for a limited period on eBay. In 2004, she noticed Proenza Schouler, who was a dying brand was beginning to get some column inches in fashion magazines again, so made a deal where their items were available on the site exclusively for 10 days only. This did extremely well, and proved ebay a serious shopping choice among the fashion conscious. Celebs don’t just use it for boosting their wardrobes; Keira Knightley sold her Vera Wang dress from the 2006 Oscars on ebay for £4,301. The proceeds went to Oxfam's £20 million appeal for the humanitarian emergency in east Africa and was enough to feed 5,000 children in Tanzania for a month, showing it has its charitable benefits too. (1) Ebay does have its downsides however, where money grabbing touts, buy up limited edition fashion offers to resell on the site of ten times the price, so we end up missing out.
Although they often clash with a Sunday morning lie-in or worse hang-over, you really do feel pleased with yourself if you can drag yourself out of bed early on a Sunday morning in the summer, and get some extra shopping in while everyone else is sleeping. Once up you can fly by the farmers market, before you have to be at your sisters for lunch, (okay maybe that’s a step too far). The price at boot sales are so low, you feel bad paying 20p for some Linda Farrowesque sunny’s. (well maybe not that bad). Boot salers are a special breed, but they are worth putting up with for a serious find. Things to look out for
There is something nostalgic about a jumble sale, one of those English institutions that hung around long after the war ended. There usually found in a church hall which smells of musty lavender and has a twenty pence entrance fee. Borrow someone’s kids as they love the toy’s and potential dressing up clothes, and spend an autumn evening rummaging through cardigans and silky slips on decorating tables. So there might be a small child attempting to play the recorder in the corner, and the ‘light refreshments’ are a far cry from Selfridges food hall, but 5p for a faux-fur stole you will soon be elbowing the grannies out of the way. You will leave with a warm glow, knowing you have contributed to the 35 pounds, 24 pence and one peseta, which was raised for the brownies minibus trip to the lightship. Once a term used solely in wine and cheese circles, is now one of fashions favourite buzz-words. However hardcore Vintage shoppers have always been present in the kings road Steinberg and Tolkien (favourite of Kate Moss), the explosion of interest in Vintage clothes is a recent thing. It seemed the designers had run out of ideas, and everything seems like a re-hash of dresses gone by, fashion addicts soon wised up to the fact that maybe they should just stick to the original. High street clothes often don’t match up to vintage in the quality stakes, and don’t have the satin lining and lined button holes of older pieces. Not only for quality but clothes from a bygone era, just seem more special. Modern Icons like Dita Von Tesse and Scarlett Johansson put old school glamour back on the map. Before we knew it every star was mixing up their Valentio with vintage, Topshop had a huge concession, and shops like oasis where introducing their ‘vintage inspired lines’, new clothes that were based on old clothes. There's something romantic about trying to picture how many special nights your dress has had in days before it was yours. Before you get your sustainable cotton knickers in a twist, you can find vintage clothes in at Pop - Pop is a way of life up north. The flagship store sits amongst a host of other vintage caves in the trendy Northern Quarter. Not selling clothes they have furniture and two cafes serving suitably retro fare like beans on toast and sausage sandwiches. The clothes are mostly sixties and seventies based. Staff members are the personification of the northern scene, all sideburns and bad attitude. Just don’t try and hand in a CV, as they will tell you it’ll end up as toilet roll. Unless you’re sleeping with the boss or look suitably junky like, you’ve not got a chance in hell. (Sorry if this is too bitchy but the pop crew are a nightmare!) (1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2006/08/25/efbag25.xml&page=1 (2) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_11/b4025087.htm?campaign_id=rss_innovate (3) http://pages.ebay.ie/community/aboutebay/news/pressreleases/fastfacts/4_2005_6.html |
Action for Sustainable Living, St Wilfrid's Enterprise Centre, Royce Road, Hulme, , M15 5BJ.Email: [email protected] Tel: 0845 634 4510 Fax: 0870 167 4655. |