Well, I’m finally back from a really fantastic vacation on the west coast of soviet kanuckistan (which, of course, included some pretty stellar thrifting) fighting nazis on the moon, with yet another thrift tip. I’m sorry to have left y’all hanging (no doubt you–all two of you- spent the past few fridays frantically hitting the refresh buttons on your browser, weeping heartily after each fruitless reload), but the beach was pleading for some stitchtowhere time nazis had started terraforming and constructing a giant laser, so you can see how I needed to suit up and ship out for awhile. The future of my summer the planet, DEPENDED on it. It is my hope that with time and perseverance and a bunch of ill-advised strikethroughs I can win back your trust and we can go back to The Way We Were.

In Tip the Second, I encouraged you to write me with some of your tips, and some of you (some, ONE, whatever!) did! Props to goes to fatshionista reader Olivia Mae, whose email inspired the topic of today’s post.

She writes: “I work at a thrift shop… [and] wanted to pass on some tips… if you spot something with a small hole/stain or a bit of wear and tear, simply point it out to me and I might possibly give you a small discount.” I’d been planning to confess my notorious parsimony and refusal to pay sticker price on ANYTHING make mention of The Possibility of Haggling in here somewhere, and Olivia Mae’s email confirmed it’s a viable Thing, and thus meritorious of its own post (even if it isn’t exactly fat-specific).

So, without further digressive strikethroughsadieu, I bring you

Thrift Tip The Third: Don’t Be Afraid to Negotiate the Price

In my years of thrifting I’ve found that prices do tend to be steep given the quality/wear and tear of many of the items. In fact, high-cost, besides the incredible scarcity of plus-sized items, is probably the most common complaint voiced to me whenever I open dialogues about thrifting: used clothing has become so pricey, people tell me, that one is better off shopping clearance at box stores because there you’ll get NEW clothing for the price of what you’d pay for something pre-loved and you’re guaranteed selection. The way I address this (the only way you can, imho, address it, really) is, pretty straightforward: I *POLITELY* point out garment flaws/stains to a salesperson and they, more often than not, adjust the total to something more reasonable. Call me callous, but given the cold-hearted capitalist culture we live in, I find it difficult not to take the position that most stores/companies are (if inadvertently) prepared to soak me for as much as possible, and, I dare say, RIP ME OFF. Thus, I’m of the mind that when it comes to shopping for clothing, it behooves me to try to shift things to be more to my liking both in terms of price, and in terms of employee/customer interactions.

It occurs to me that in some parts of the continent/circles/thrifting elite (they exist! they are the people who buy those $100 petticoats!) it might be considered rude or gauche to openly question the price of something, so it might be useful for me to illuminate some of my personal context when it comes to the practice of haggling and bargaining. I was spawned and continue to reside in what might very well be one of the cheaper cities (in terms of both costs of living, and people’s spending habits/sensibilities) in North America. We (or at least most of the folks in my circles) actively haggle–or bargain–for all sorts of non-edible wares from cars (both new & used) to 50 cent salad spinners and garage sales. Most Winnipegers love a good bargain, and we all get more satisfaction if we feel like we not only helped make that bargain happen, but increased its bargainicity (totally a word) in the process. Bargain-hunting/negotiation is so woven into my social fabric to the point that I’m kind of surprised when I get my commodity fetishism on with someone who doesn’t check out what’s on clearance of feel remotely moved to try and negotiate a better price based on a rip or tear or loose button.

It also occurs to me that this tip might get some backs up, since many thrift shops and second hand stores are run by charities (The Salvation Army, for instance) or at least donate a portion of their proceeds to charity. While I’m not exactly flush with cash, I should clarify that I don’t mind and expect to pay more substantial amounts of money for second hand items, (fine vintage pieces fetch scads on ebay, such is the way with one-of-a-kind rarified objects) especially when I know my (very often) consumer indulgence, will go to a good cause. I’m not saying that thrifting is all Let’s Make a Deal all the time, because I don’t believe the prices are ALWAYS unfair. If you’ve spent any amount of time in any of the large thrift department stores (especially big thrift chains like Value Village or Savers, as it’s known in most of the the U.S.) you’ve probably noticed that pricing from store to store (and even week to week) can be wildly inconsistent. At giant stores, the volume of donations is large, and (as, my friend who worked at VV for several years tells me) they try to price and replenish racks as quickly as possible. They do the best they can in the time they have, but any of us who’ve worked in retail know how fast things move. Pricers and sorters don’t always have the time to thoroughly comb garments for stains or rips or imperfections and are generally pricing based on like-items and brand reputation. This is why a black tank with frayed edges or a small rip in the hem, could very easily have the same ticket price as one that is sparkling and perfectly pristine. It seems to me that (in my city, and I’m told others) it’s reasonable to assume that with such large volumes of rotating stock some items will end-up priced very high. (The opposite is also true… Every now and then designer labels will be missed and so priced ridiculously low, these rare finds constitute the Thrifting Holy Grail, but that’s another post for another time). If you operate under the philosophy that humans are fallible (and shaftings within steely unfeeling capitalist culture both predicated and inevitable) bargaining negotiations aren’t necessarily about being stingy–it’s a way to actively engage in the often unthinking and automatic act of purchase exchange (how many of us “check out” at the check out… I know I’ve found myself absently punching in the pin on my debit before even looking at the total… very unsettling) and keep thrift prices reasonable and comparable and competitive.

Olivia Mae closed her email reminding us that being nice to store employees is beneficial not just for obtaining a discount now and again, but also for tracking down coveted items. She notes “I can easily help you find things since I probably put the clothes on the racks…[and] if we don’t have a particular something that you had in mind, then I might just keep my eye out for you in the sorting room when I am tagging and pricing clothes.”

Thanks, Olivia! I know I often–to borrow a phrase from high school lit class–frame thrifting as a classic sort of a wo/man versus environment type conflict/quest. Racks upon (often disorganized) racks of potential allies and enemies that I must (and my fat thrift friend) conquer on my (our) own. I forget that staff are there to help and could certainly point me in the right direction when I’m after something specific! Thank you for that reminder!

I hope you’re enjoying this ongoing feature on thrifting/fatshion. If you have any tips you’d like me to share/write about feel free to hit the “contact us” button (put “thrift tips” in the subject line) and drop me a line. I’ve got more tips a brewin’ but I’d love to hear from you & will (of course!) credit you if I write about your tip!

Welcome to another installment of Fat Thrift Tips! If I’m doing my job, then last week’s preamble & inaugural post inspired all of you take up (or at least think about thinking about taking up) the fat thrift gauntlet! I hope that you’ve managed to clock some time out in the secondhand stores & thrift chains in your area & that your pilgrimages have been successful, yielding many sassy & sumptuous spoils! If your thrift-fu has been off (or, dare I say it, non-existant!) I hope that you’re at least pumped & primed to talk more shop & that this week’s tip will inspire you to get (back) out there!

Tip the Second: Find a Fat Thrift Buddy/Form a Dynamic Duo

This week’s tip is somewhat of a collaboration between Lesley (aka Lover of Dresses and site admin) and myself, in that I coughed out the raw goods and she styled it into something useful and inspired. You might just say she is the ingenious Leela & Amy to my hapless Dr. Zoidberg.* In the course of putting together this week’s tip I asked Lesley if she thought buddying-up was “too obvious” and she, ever-articulate and always in possession of the bon mot juste (if you can’t find yours, it’s cause she has it!) replied:

“I think a lot of nonactivist fat-friendships are based on collaboratively dieting and/or “supporting” one another in the apparent misery of fatness - I think the suggestion of taking a fat friend and forming a positive Dynamic Duo out to conquer the Fat Thrift Challenge is wonderfully inspirational in a non-body-hating way.”

And how. Ever the shameless consumer, I was really only focused on the time-saving-stuff-acquiring strategic aspect of a shopping companion: dividing and conquering at the thrift store is a much more efficient & effective way to tackle & cover ground. Your friend can hit up cardigans while you scour dresses, you can scope out skirts while they plough through the pants. If you’re close in size, it’s a bonus because it means you’d be searching that size range for yourself anyway. Also if something you pulled for yourself doesn’t work on you, you can toss it over for them to try on!** If you’re different sizes, it’s really not such a big deal. I’ve thrifted with my smaller friends and it doesn’t bother me to search through a rack of smalls anymore than it bothers them to checkout the xls for me. The friend doesn’t have to be fat, really. They just have to be an actual friend (aka not negative or mocking of your body/size).

I have a fat friend who I thrift with on a regular basis, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our styles & sizes aren’t exactly the same, but we know each other’s tastes & body-types so well that we can grab stuff for each other. There’s a few thrift stores in my area that border on warehouse size, and I really couldn’t imagine tackling them solo. And I know I don’t need to tell you that trying on velvet sequined jumpsuits with gigantic shoulder pads when you’re by yourself is vaguely amusing if recounted. Trying on a velvet-sequined jumpsuit with gigantic shoulder pads in front of your friend (who may or may not have a camera phone) becomes a legend for the ages!

But back to Lesley’s more substantial political point: many of us have had friendships where we enabled body-hatred and negativity*** and no more was this hatred more actively played-out then during clothes shopping. Your mileage may very, but much of my mall (maul)-trolling days were spent with girls much smaller than I, though we all hated and resented our bodies with equal degrees of intensity. When things fit, we still found a way to put a negative spin on it “this is cute but would be better if I had more/less…” “I guess it’s nice but it looks better on you.” And I don’t think a day went by when we didn’t talk about how much weight we felt we should lose. Even if you haven’t all been a part of the Mean Girls**** type conversation I’m describing, we’ve at least given audience to them in fitting rooms, clothing stores, public washrooms etc.

And there’s probably a bunch of us who have forged relationships with other fatties through diet group meetings. I don’t doubt that people who also happen to diet can be just as lovely as those of us actively advocating body acceptance. It’s just that the context in which those kinds of relationships are established—one of a shared body hate & shame—is far from empowering.

Finding a fat friend to thrift with is, on the other hand, a really awesome premise to build on and probably kind of revolutionary for a lot of us. Just imagine how much more navigable clothes-hunting is/can be when you’re going at it with someone who you can bitch with about the lack of options (as opposed to lamenting your body proper) and celebrate with when you find something incredible. (Another fattie will TOTALLY get the exhilaration of finding a mint condition 50s house dress in your size and will probably squee audibly right along with you). Of course, thrifting with a fellow fattie doesn’t necessarily mean every day will be a good body day. But, if you’re blessed with (fat) friends like mine, you’ll find they are really awesome at acknowledging that loving and appreciating your body in this fat-hating culture can be really tough, while simultaneously refusing to let you perpetrate active self-hate.

I hope you’re enjoying this ongoing feature on thrifting/fatshion. If you have any tips you’d like me to share/write about feel free to hit the “contact us” button (put “thrift tips” in the subject line) and drop me a line. I’ve got more tips a brewin’ but I’d love to hear from you & will (of course!) credit you if I write about your tip!

^{*ever see that episode of Futurama where Bender ends up on tour with Beck? Remember how Dr Zoidberg keeps coughing up those blue pearls that Leela & Amy fashion into necklaces, which turn an incredible profit? Then Zoidberg is like “Apparently I’ve been making fine jewelry for years.” It’s exactly like that except that I’m not a lobster-like lifeform and I don’t so much eat dirt and the pearls I bring up are metaphorical not literal and Lesley isn’t two people or a cyclops and doesn’t own a pink velour tracksuit (that I know of)… But other than that, it’s TOTALLY the same.}

^{**remember to make sure your friend is in the fitting room beside/across from you. One time I thought my friend was beside me, but she’d wandered off to scope out a record and I merrily chucked a shirt into some unsuspecting thrifter’s fitting room. Luckily said unsuspecting thrifter was a sportin’ sort & found the whole debacle rather entertaining. I’m sure not everyone would be so understanding.}

^{***aka every friend I had in highschool.}

^{**** I’m thinking specifically of the scene where the four girls stand around a mirror lamenting all the things that are “wrong” with their bodies. Lindsay Lohan’s character, Cady, having grown up in a remote area of Africa with her professor parents, is unfamiliar with the ritual and actually feels pressured into saying something nasty about herself to fit in. (though it’s worth nothing that the best she comes up with on the spot “in the morning I have really bad breath.”)}

The shop reviews on this site and the fatshionista community on livejournal are amazing resources for locating the latest fatshions online & in brick & mortar stores. Certainly the pleasure of slipping into a crisp brand-spanking-new-with-tags garment cannot be denied, but neither can the special sort of satisfaction that comes from discovering a lovely one-of-a-kind dress amongst racks full of Cosby sweaters and faded mickey mouse tee shirts.

In general, when I covet a certain piece, I will take to second hand & thrift stores first. I believe that as a society we (& lest you think I am pointing fingers, I am firmly including myself in this) produce too much, consume too much & waste even more. In Brave New World Aldous Huxley wrote satirically & critically of what he imagined would be our decadent & environmentally ignorant future–a future where people would treat all things (especially clothing) as disposable, would sooner buy something new then stitch a dropped hem or reinforce a button. In 1932, a lot of this seemed a horrific and implausible exaggeration, but in 2008, with the influx of throw-away clothing stores (Sirens, Stitches etc) & clothing quality of brand stores deteriorating exponentially, Huxley’s speculative satire proves (for me) to be portentous. (Most commercial) clothing is constructed to rapidly deconstruct, even as the price tag for new clothing doubles & triples. It goes without saying that a capitalist economy & infrastructure is necessarily built around a principle of planned deterioration. If things didn’t degrade as rapidly, we wouldn’t be back every couple of months (weeks?), forced to replace everything that has unraveled. So, I thrift (when possible) not only because I have a deep and abiding love for indestructible polyester & vintage pieces, but because I can much easier justify having a sizeable wardrobe if a (hopefully large) portion of it is comprised of recycled clothing. Thrifting is one of the ways I personally feel I can contribute (if in a microscopic way) to a healthier planet (& prevent myself from literally having to live in my shoes). To put it plainly, the [current] clothing industry taking care of us (by offering us quality & accessible options), we’re not taking care of the environment, thrifting seems–to me–like one possible way to address these issues.

No doubt by now some of you are saying tl;dr and heading over to cat rave or kittenwar, but others are saying, hey stitchtowhere, I kind of agree with some/all of this and I’d really love to get more into thrifting but… given the scarcity of fun and fatshionable things that I’d actually want to wear in stores that are supposed to stock my size, how can I reasonably expect not to be utterly demoralized and disappointed in a venue that isn’t explicitly fattie-friendly?

I won’t deny that shopping & scarcity(follow the link to site admin Lesley’s great post on that topic) is a constant issue. Indeed, thrifting can be very difficult & discouraging & demoralizing (and many other sad words beginning in d) when you’re outside of what the fashion industry/majority of retailers have dubbed the “straight” or “normal” size range. I will also freely admit that I’m fortunate because in my city (& neighbourhood) there are quite a few thrift stores and the majority of them even have plus sections. The proximity of these stores & the flexbility of my current job, & my general love of the chase, makes thrifting viable for me. Some days I have amazing luck, other days, it feels like the loveliest pieces never exist in double digits & these are the days that find me trolling places like Old Navy & the disposable mall stores & department store sales* for the pieces that elude me in the second hand shops & for things that will fit & still allow me to pay my rent. I don’t really have a solution for thrifting woes, but I can say that, for me, the rewards of thrifting trump the frustrations, and, are not just limited to the sartorial.

And because I want to encourage those of you who’ve got one foot on the thrifted (and fabulous!) wagon to climb aboard and go the distance, and my years of thrifting have taught me a trick or five, I’m going to start assembling a series of fat-specific thrift tips here on Fridays. Here we go:

Fat Thrift Tip The First: Try Shit On.

This might seem really, really, REALLY obvious, but one of the tragic flaws of shoppers (and characters in Shakespearean tragedies ha ha ha) of all sizes is that we don’t look at the actual physical dimensions a garment occupies but believe that it’s “fitliness” corresponds directly to the number on the tag. If a lovely catches our eye, we immediately find the tag and if the number on it proves to be smaller or–god forbid!– LARGER than the (arbitrary & usually inconsistent) number we think we wear, we–more often than not–dejectedly let it sink back into the second-hand depths. I am according to most plus size retailers in the 18/20/22 range but I’ve got things in my closet ranging from size 10-26 that FIT. I would never have discovered half of these things if I confined my search to the (singular and usually hideously fugly) rack labeled “PLUS.”

Thrift stores are great places to build up your shopping courage/fattitude. I have never once had anyone in a thrift store stop me from trying something on, and I think that’s my where what my friends refer to as “my bizarre sense of shopping entitlement” comes from. You can treat thrift stores like giant fitting rooms & (in my personal experience) no one will bat an eye. There are very few among us who haven’t experienced a derisive remark from a salesclerk or even had other shoppers take shots at us for our size & I think the fear & memory & expectation of this sort of behaviour–the huge amount of ill-fitting crap notwithstanding–makes shopping really stressful & emotionally trying. Being able pull & grab stuff off racks & try it on the spot & in thrift shops is and continues to be a gratifying & liberating experience for me. It has greatly improved my eye for what will fit my body & it also serves to reaffirm just how wildly sizes vary, which has helped me not to be attached to a number & attach meaning–negative or positive–to that number, but rather to focus on WHAT FITS.

_{*I recognize that I am privileged to be able to buy some things new in the first place and, that were i not able to do so my wardrobe would be a lot less expansive.}