Macklemore once gave some valuable financial advice when he said in his hit single “Thrift Shop” — “Fifty dollars for a T-shirt … That’s getting tricked by a business.”
Too often, clothes are bought for more than for the simple aesthetic; many shoppers buy clothing for the brand name rather than for the actual value of the clothing. Hence, the idea of thrift shopping is an appealing one to satisfy the elementary need for clothing, favoring productivity and aesthetic over consumerism and brand names. Recently, thrift shops have a new extended market from the primary shoppers who shop out of necessity — thrift shoppers who shop because it’s considered cool or trendy.
Junior Jake Pilgrim is a fashion connoisseur who takes great pride in his external outlook — sporting designer brands from Gucci to YEEZY Season on a daily basis. But Pilgrim also finds fashion on the other end of the scale — he is an avid thrift shopper, always on the lookout to snag a profitable deal.
Once a week, Pilgrim journeys to The Haight, an area dense with thrift stores in San Francisco, and hunts for clothes to add to his wardrobe. “You can get insane deals in the right places and find unique stuff. There is a giant range of clothing from the 1970’s to modern day. The vast selection allows a variety of things to show up,” he says.
Whether Pilgrim is rocking clothes from a department store or from a thrift shop, it ultimately comes down to the look. “Thrift shopping has more or less the same [process] as shopping at a department store, you find what you like or think is unique and buy it, but in thrift shopping, it is a lot more about the search that makes it interesting. There is varied quality in thrift stores, from really nice handmade pieces to third-world pieces, all at the same price.”
The employees at San Mateo Thrift Shop Episcopal Church Kathy Eyre and Luna Stafford seem to agree with Pilgrim’s observations. While only open for three days of the week and operating for just three hours, the church thrift shop has a wide array of clothing.
“Clothing, books, jewelry, household items, and antiques are all what we offer and what customers like to buy,” Eyre says. All the items received are purely donations from the church community. Stafford says, “Antiques are especially popular items.”
The new trend of thrift shopping has created misconceptions that label thrift shoppers who aren’t shopping out of necessity as hipsters. “Thrift shopping isn’t a hipster thing to do. Hipster has been played out over time and just isn’t the same thing as thrift shopping. Thrift shopping is a different way of life and different doesn’t automatically make something hipster,” Pilgrim says.
Besides the uniqueness thrift shopping brings, the practice is also financially smart.
“The people who shop at thrift shops are very smart shoppers because they are getting the best deals for their money. We have brand name clothing, we have antiques, men’s suits, and a variety of items that would generally cost you a fortune,” says Eyre. For their thrift shop store, Stafford and Eyre look at the market value of donated items and take 50 percent off the item to sell. “We lower the price because it’s not about the money. It’s for the charity expenditures,” Eyre says. The Episcopal Church Thrift Store has a yearly financial goal, and they donate the proceeds to community charities.
However, some shoppers like sophomore Stephen Yu go to thrift shops out of practicality rather than for trendiness. “Clothes are just clothes, so I don’t really care where it comes from, as long as it looks good and feels good,” he says. In addition to thrift shops, Yu also gets his clothings from other economically minded stores such as Marshalls.
Yu believes that too often people attach negative stereotypes to lower income people who shop at thrift stores. “There are reasons why many kids who get their clothes from thrift shops don’t like to share it. People will judge you and make assumptions, mostly negative, about you if you tell them you get your clothes from thrift stores,” Yu says.
Eyre believes that the common notion of thrift stores to solely be a place of lower-income individuals is absurd.
“People from all walks of life come into our store. Affluent people in the Peninsula, working people from San Mateo come during their break time, those who are lower income and need clothes. That’s what thrift shopping is about: the community. We don’t discriminate about who you are or where you come from; thrift shopping is about shopping and helping everyone find clothing and unique items,” Eyre says.
The thrift shopping industry is a unique type of shopping industry with a diverse group of shoppers. It can satisfy the need to be unique and trendy, but sometimes just provides the bare essentials for individuals. Its overall flexibility epitomizes thrift shopping as a versatile experience.
