Warning: this article contains a lot of “if you know you know” fashion designers and brands that I won’t go too deeply into
I learned about clothing resale in high school, initially just using poshmark to buy $120 Patagonia synchilla snap sweaters for $30. Towards the end of my freshman year of college I got more into selling. It was initially finding brands like Reformation and Lululemon at the pay-per-pound Goodwill Bins and thinking “wow I’m paying $1 for something that would be $99 new”. And then flipping the item on poshmark for $25.
It was also around this time Sydney (who runs rabbitwithwings Depop) and I became close again as she was starting fashion school in London that fall. We would go thrifting at the Unique (known as Savers outside of DC) together and I learned so much from her that summer… especially how thrifting required picking through every single item from every single rack, memorizing the feeling of acrylic vs wool vs cotton vs angora on your hands, and the importance of picking “weird” things over boring branded items. She gave me a couple ideas of brands to follow, especially vintage ones like hysteric glamour, dolce and Gabbana, vintage miu miu, all as just a starter list. This set me up for some initial sales on depop.
I was always really into estate sales, a habit I learned from my mom, who adored good deals and vintage furniture. I began following Los Angeles area estate sales in late 2021, and specifically this one company on Facebook called Antiques on Magnolia. They posted this very charming looking sale in a bungalow on Bushnell avenue in Alhambra, California.
I distinctly remember having a bad day on Thursday and deciding to go to the sale to see if it would help and when I arrived I was *stunned* by the racks and racks of y2k mesh tops, one of a kind cottage core girbaud skirts and custo Barcelona face tops with bell sleeves, nylon gorp core cop copine skirt and pants, it was heaven for a girl like me. I spent three hours trying on everything. At $5 a top $10 for bottoms I bought close to 40 pieces. Over time I started to have an idea of which pieces I kept grabbing and which ones were gathering dust, and I started posting on depop again….
I lived in switzerland in Summer 2022 and the first thing I did upon arrival was get the Ricardo app, which is Swiss eBay. It was nice bc the sellers were really happy to do in person pickups at their homes, and I bought the GA all swiss travel pass so I would make a trip out of it. I bought these issey miyake pants from a young mom in Zug, this girbaud skirt from a girl in Basel, and very notably took a long trip to buy these insane vivienne westwood corset boots from a serial thrifter guy in Landquart.
Through Ricardo I met my Swiss friend Paula and we would rave about girly Morgan de Toi tops and she’d spill tea on her Portuguese chess master ex boyfriend who was twice her age. It was the best! Her shop’s name is called Carac99, named after a delicious Swiss green colored chocolate pastry that I started getting after work from Migros market.
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Also in 2022 I started religiously going to LA area flea markets every Sunday. There was the Rose Bowl Flea first, then the PCC Flea, the Silverlake Flea, the Los Feliz Flea. Back in those days the Los Feliz Flea took place in the parking lots and yards around John Marshall High School, which was the most photogenic flea market setting you could possibly find… and I would go most saturdays to stroll around and occasionally get stopped by tiktok interviewers asking where my outfit was from (I was ready to answer pretentiously always).
I still remember I found this $5 table at one vendor and it was this very tiny angora top. It was way too small for me but it had some potential and I asked the seller for more info, and after chatting I decided to buy. That day I met Camille, my talented fashion stylist friend and her roommate at the time, Mia, who ran Juice Rack as a flea vendor.
A lot happened in between but later Mia graciously let me co-sell with her at Los Feliz, which meant bringing a bunch of my thrift finds and borrowing a rack there. I only made a couple hundred dollars each time for me but always so worth it. One of my fondest experiences had to be parking in the LFF vendor lot and traversing the baseball field to get to the courtyard to set up the tent and put the clothes on the hangars on the racks. And from this Mia and I became really close friends, she visited me in Switzerland and Shanghai and I visited her in Tokyo, and she showed me her world of modeling and filmmaking and photography, just some of the most fulfilling experiences together…
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Those days I had dyed red hair and was crazy about Gregg araki’s 1997 film Nowhere and I gravitated towards cuckoo French pieces and animal print cavalli pants. Here are a few of the pieces and looks from my depop + my style renaissance
October 21, 2021 At the Rose Bowl Flea with ellen and professionally shot! I’m wearing a limited too red paisley shirt (which I bought from Euphoria flea with Emily) layered over by Evisu overall skirt, bag is Anna Sui (my first ever buyee purchase and it had the most beautiful red inner lining), boots are Luchesse from a Facebook marketplace seller in Denver CO. In my hand I’m holding a silk patched cardigan (which now belongs to Mia!) and a Miss sixty mohair sweater.
April 23, 2022: I’m wearing Issey Miyake 2006 top (bought from eBay pickup from an absolute diva living in the Hollywood Senior Living center), Karlaidlaw Ruched Skirt (recommended by Sydney), Girbaud pokachu bag (Also Sydney), and London Underground platform boots that made me 6 feet tall
June 4, 2022 Shot by Mia O’Neal at Los Feliz Flea. I’m wearing Brooks Brothers button up shirt XL layered by a Calvin Klein (I wanna say Raf Simons collection) distressed sweater vest, Rick Owens drkshdw tote bag and depop tables pleated skirt. Of course hte star of the show are those LUSH Dior moon boots that were SO in in 2022, in a burgundy red that perfectly matched my hair - I bought them on Vinted.it (which only sells in Italy) and I basically translated phrases in Italian to ask if the seller could ship to California… it was a saga…
June 25, 2022: I had to include this one even though I dont own the main piece here because I am such a regular at Tokio7 (the store in this photo) now and I only live a block away from it lol. Lydia introduced it to me and here I am wearing that crazy impractical spacey Issey set with my white wig, my Linda Farrow Bernhard Wilhelm Mask Sunnies (Which are a grail I know), crazy silver jewelry from Syd, and Dhgate replicas of the Bottega Veneta puddle boot which I eventually left in Switzerland after a summer of good use.
August 5, 2022: The insta story post I made in honor of Issey Miyake who passed away on that day - I was obsessed to say the least and still am….
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This past october, Ellen and I went to a “Japanese and European Vintage” popup in the East Village. I picked up this adorable Cop Copine puffer coat and margiela pants and as usual begin bargaining with the seller, Jordan, a Pratt art student. After deliberating the price tag for a bit I ask: “do you do trades by any chance?” He says yes and I tell him wait right here and ~30 min later I appear with my 2nd Street bags full of designer clothes.
Just like that the bartering began - it was like this unspoken language. we would both look at a certain piece, like say issey miyake me blue turtleneck, and we could instinctively attach a value. Like for example I saw it and thought- well I bought it for 50 but its market value is something like $100…. And Jordan would say ‘this would be 110 for me’. And clothing trades are kind of like a game bc you might have an idea of a value in your head but you are arbitraging against their perceived value. Like there was this pair of girbaud pants that didnt fit me well so I didnt want them anyways. I bought them for $30 and had ghe waist taken in for $10. Jordan valued them at $95 for the purposes of the trade. There was this Goa skirt I bought from a Bookoff in Japan for 500 yen ($3) that I just never ever wore bc it looked silly on me… and of course Jordan knew the brand instantly and threw out a $100 offer which had my heart pounding with excitement.
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In the end the clothing arbitrage community is just people selling their clothes to each other like a circlejerk of Prada kitten heels (I once saw the exact cow print horsehair heels I sold on depop at a random LA market popup once) and the money aspect does make us inherently transactional, but really few things are as “if you know you know” and “you had to be there”. Like you just had to have learned ヴィヴィアン (Vivienne in Japanese) for Buyee (Japanese proxy shipping service) searches and only Vivienne because that way you could get both Vivienne Westwood AND Vivienne Tam. You had to have waited in line for 2 hours at the Eckhaus Latta sample sale in LA chinatown followed by hitting at least six Crossroads and 2nd Street in Silverlake on your way back home picking through every piece.
One thing I know for sure - I’ve met some of the most special people in my life from this and I wouldn’t be the same without it.
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