Second hand shopping - the lowdown

Jessica Hannan explains what to look for and where to find it:

• eBay

• Charity Shops (thrift stores)

• Car boot sales

• Jumble sales

• Vintage

eBay

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.

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Charity Shops (thrift stores)

Charity shops were once exclusive to pensioners and art-students. Stuffy shops full hand-me-downs which any respectable lady of fashion would not be seen dead in. Then a few years back, with the arrival of Oxfam Originals in London, and ‘Cheap Date’ a fanzine dedicated to the gems Kira Joliffe and Bay Garnett unearthed in the ‘thrift stores’ of down town New York, charity shopping was reborn as ‘thrifting’ and the suburban Cancer Research, was no longer safe.

Suddenly it was acceptable in the most fashionable circles, to hoist up a Dior dress with a 25p belt from PDSA. The sweet naivety of the elder ladies who work in the shops and priced the clothes, often didn’t notice the odd Chanel belt or gold lame 60’s dress that fell past their untrained fashion eye. The older a garment was the cheaper they priced it, what we saw as vintage they saw as ‘old fashioned’

‘Nobody will want a big old dress like that, I haven’t seen one of those since the coronation.’

for a while everyone was happy, they were shifting the old stock, and we where decked in serious vintage for less then £1.25. They soon wised up to the current trend for vintage and real value of the designer clothes, and started pricing accordingly, which was only fair for the charities involved. So although The New Bond Street branch of Oxfam’s prices might mirror that of the higher end of the high street, the clothes are more likely to be good quality designer so are still excellent value and more importantly you are giving to a good cause.

However not all of the great British public are preoccupied with fashion; some postcodes still have charity shops full of unearthed goodies. The Banardo’s might not be bustling with Balenciaga like the ones around Knightsbridge, or Crammed with Chanel like the Cheshire’s Oxfam, (reportedly where the wags off load there shopping sprees). As a general rule, if a town has a more affluent, elderly demographic then they will stock more vintage items of a better quality.

Basically the less students and fashion types to snap up the good stuff, and well-off old ladies clearing out their Victorian town houses of ‘years of old tat’ the more likely you are to pick up a treasure. As a general rule; head to coastal villages and historical towns. When it comes to finding a Mary Quant original for £1.50 we have to get ruthless.

Things to look out for

• Fake furs, (or real depending if you go for the ‘it didn’t die for me, I am just saving it from going to a landfill and turning into harmful methane gas’, argument).

• Seventies platforms, eighties court shoes. Generally peoples feet have got bigger, so you are more likely to find your new fav dancing shoes if your daintily footed. A good cobbler will re-heel stilettos that have been worn-out for a couple of pounds.

• 1950’s bathing suits.

• Seventies sun hats.

• Anything gold lame. Handbags, shoes dresses, charity shops often have sweet themes like ‘Christmas section’ as soon as December hits, amongst the eighties puff-balls sit some Studio 54 sequins and 1950’s velvet.

• Scarf’s; from Scottish shawls to Kishamoto style prints; these can be picked up for pennies.

• Belts, elastic waist belts, diamante encrusted, patent, ethnic. One of my all time favourite buys was a gold quilted waist belt with the famous interlocked C’s on the overly shiny buckle, all for the grand old price of 50p, whether it was a fake or not, was irrelevant as every girl in its wake was green with envy.

• Handbags, soft quality leather that no one else with have, quirky summer shopper to stow your knitting on the train. Pearly clutch bags with matching purses inside.

• Costume jewellery, pretty gold chains, and ornate broaches to brighten up a winter coat.

• Cashmere and cosy cricket jumpers, the men’s section is great for quality cashmere and angora to hang around the house in, or pull on one of your vintage waist belts and wear out of the house with leggings and boots.

• Berets, quality Kangol ones in a colour for every outfit.

• Tailored tweed, a memorable find was a DAKS tweed jacket from an Oxfam in Bath for £4.99. I changed the buttons to these sixties Bakelite orange and white ones when I got bored.

• Old dress patterns, bags of wool and knitting needles, buttons, ribbons and beads for when you’re feeling creative.

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Car boot sales

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

• Vintage sunglasses

• Chintzy tea-sets, Cath Kidson style.

• Record players and records (Ziggy Star Dust sounds much better on vinyl)

• Books and magazines ( I dream of the day I find someone’s entire Vogue collection)

• Sixties printed tea towels.

• Vintage Robert’s radios, (keeps the boyfriend quiet for the rest of the Sunday trying to fix it).

• Pill-box hats, deck chairs, plants, lamp shades……the best thing about a boot sale is the possibilities are endless.

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Jumble sales

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.

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Vintage

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!)

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(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

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Page last modified: 14 June 2007