Sunday, December 14, 2008

Thrift stores have become fashionable

Poland, which hasn't yet become ravaged by the worldwide economic crisis, has discovered thrift shops. South Florida has already discovered them. In tony Boca Raton, you can't even consign your designer clothes because the stores have no room. (Unless you have Hermes scarfes and Louis Vuitton bags, they won't take your merchandise.) With Madoff's hit to the wealth in Palm Beach, shopping in thrift stores will become trendy as better goods hit these shops. The story in Poland below:

Thrift stores here have become impromptu laboratories of the changing mores and attitudes in a country adjusting to newfound wealth. Young Poles here in the capital are now confident enough in their ability to buy new clothes that they at last have taken to wearing old ones. Those eking out a living on fixed incomes, especially retirees, still lack the means to do otherwise.

And so the hip and the strapped meet at secondhand stores like Tomitex, on Nowowiejska Street in downtown Warsaw.


The pronounced stigma of buying used clothes in a poor country was once a powerful deterrent for shopping — or at least admitting to shopping — at secondhand stores, known here by the derogative colloquialism lumpex, which translates as something like bum export. That stigma has been replaced among the young by a playful attitude toward vintage clothing and bargain-hunting that would not be out of place among their contemporaries in London or New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/world/europe/14warsaw.html?hp

3 comments:

Shopping Golightly said...

Thrift shopping has always been in style for smart shoppers. I've been thrifting for years and usually pay 2%to 11% of the retail price on items, many are new. I've saved thousands for my family in 08 alone.

Check out my blog The Thrifty Chicks and see the slide show of a sampling of items I've bought and feel a good kind of sticker shock.

I hope this increase in thrift sales is not a trend. I hope it's here to stay. The world would be better for it and so would our wastestream.

Palmoni said...

Nice blog! I have the precursor of the preambulator.

check out www.auh2odesigns.com She turns thrifty clothing into trendy haves in the East Village

Unknown said...

I've always loved secondhand shopping, even when I could still afford to buy new! Vintage things have so much more charm and character.