Did Tom Wolfe have it right when he claimed that much that is strange and crazy and wonderful in American culture has a way of starting out on the West Coast and eventually filtering East?

For those of us far more fascinated with the inception and dissemination of fashion trends than the consumption of them, the neighborhoods of San Francisco have always been a buffet of people watching for the street style destined to seed the runways and department stores. And Guy Trebay of the New York Times nails it in his opening line of Fashion Diary: The Tribes of San Francisco:

IF a decade spent following the fashion flock will teach you anything, it’s that fashion people seldom have much to do with generating style. This little-appreciated truth naturally comes to mind as the Fashion Week juggernaut lumbers toward Manhattan, a rolling, continuous loop of live-streamed, Tweeted product-placement set to ambient glamour-buzz cranked out by the Industrial Hype Machine.

…What she likes about San Francisco style, said Ms. Grim, who is in her early 40s, is that the town is remarkably free of fashion hierarchies and in-crowd tyrannies. There is no shoe of the season here. There is no It bag. Except perhaps for the pulp-novel heiresses Vanessa and Victoria Traina (who anyway are almost New Yorkers), there are no Vogue-anointed darlings-du-jour.

Photo: Heidi Schumann for NY Times

One thing notably absent, however, in Trebay’s analysis is the influence of Burning Man culture on the San Francisco fashion scene. Given the thousands of key Burner players whose default world residence is the bay area yet keep their culture alive and well year round, I find it hard to believe that their DIY radical self expression anti-corporate style wouldn’t permeate out onto the streets.

Interestingly enough, even though the quirky, innovative aesthetic is pervasive, my handful of trips to San Francisco hunting for the corresponding retailer sources - especially local designers - have left me standing mostly in resale shops or malls in tourist destinations. Ever so often there will be a brave entrepreneur opening a collective of local designers, a curated vintage store in a high rent district that mixes in refashioned pieces, or a boutique carrying avant-garde designers from NY… but those are the exception, not the rule.

Even locals tend to concede, unasked, that San Francisco has historically been an also-ran in fashion terms. “Every time a designer from here has a little bit of success, they disappear to New York,” said Gladys Perint Palmer, executive director of fashion at the Academy of Art University, whose fashion department has an enrollment of 2,500.

Allow me to digress for a moment… 2500 fashion students? That’s about 1000 graduating a year, and that’s just one school in one city. A private, for-profit school with 5 digit tuition. Are there enough jobs in the industry for all of them? Um, no. Back to San Francisco…

Ms. Perint Palmer was referring specifically to Nice Collective, a San Francisco-based label founded in 1997 by Joe Haller and Ian Hannula in part to capitalize on distinctive elements of a local style that, like so much else in the Bay Area, seems to be generated by some loopy organic collective impulse rather than an editorial cabal.

It’s so good I have to restate it: “generated by some loopy organic collective impulse rather than an editorial cabal.” But really, especially since the ‘youth revolution’ of the 60s, has that editorial cabal really dictated much? I’d argue that the best they can do is distill and co-opt the shapes, colors and styling that settles out of the collective choices of the loopy ones. And where do those loopy young ones go for the raw materials of their sartorial expression, especially when their piled into shared bedrooms in sky high rent apartments? You guessed it - thrift stores. Which has over the past couple of decades seeped into the mainstream to the point of becoming a standard style option, perhaps even one with far more cred for the find than the spoon fed trends of the big stores. Trebay quotes a former department store buyer:

“The stigma attached to used-clothing is gone,” she added. “You can either spend $300 on a top at Neiman Marcus or go to the thrift store and buy a bag of clothes for a tenth as much.”

Exactly. And this leaves one with far more time and disposable income for living, not just posing like a well dressed doll.

…Or you can do both and then mash up the results, as the women of the Mission tribe do.

“Those girls are the local Holly Golightlys,” Mr. Ospital of M.A.C. said of women like Rachel Corrie, a waitress at Tartine, who as she left work last week hopped onto her bike wearing what looked like a gingham onesie, feet shod in gladiator sandals and a velvet equestrian hunt cap passing as safety gear perched atop her head.

Girls like her are all over the Mission. You see them flying down Valencia Street on Vespas, their wildly improvised get-ups composed of, say, rags scavenged from the Bay Area’s fabled thrift shops (Out of the Closet in the Castro, Eco-Thrift in Vallejo, the Goodwill outpost just off the 101 Freeway in San Rafael), Marni skirts, vintage SM leathers culled from an eclectic assortment of goods at Marc Josef’s locally legendary antiques shop, Tradesmen, and wingtip shoes.

…“People will wear vintage with some D.I.Y. thing they made themselves with some piece that they couldn’t resist in a boutique,” Ms. Grim said. “They’re not afraid to mash things up.”

Because it might be that one innovative, interesting piece from the boutique, something that might have been inspired by vintage, might even have been made from vintage, but definitely didn’t happen prior to this decade… that’s the piece that communicates that subtle status that signals to other members of the targeted tribe that you’re doing well enough, and care enough, for bits of investment dressing.

“It’s a very difficult city to read,” Mr. Lopez said, owing largely to the local distaste for ostentation and hype, a suspicion of anything that requires a high-degree of difficulty to pull off and that people spend a lot of their lives in cars.

“San Francisco is definitely about quiet style,” he said. “People care. They have the clothes, but they wear them in private. They bring in the most amazing stuff for consignment and I’m always thinking, ‘Where did you wear this thing?’ ”

Stealth Wealth indeed.

My friend Malissa Long produced a fashion show held on the south steps of the Texas State Capitol and asked me to say a few words. Here’s the text:

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Claire James and Malissa has asked me to say a few words about the fashion climate here in Austin, TX (my home town) and how that might interface with the global fashion phenomenon at large. I do believe that right now and especially in the coming decade that Austin, along with the rest Texas, will offer a unique set of opportunities based on a combination of economic factors and cultural influences you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

But what I’m not going to do is stand here and tell you that if you just do what you love and believe in yourself and visualize success that all of your dreams will come true.  No, think of me more as the critical naysayer of the fashion industry - trying to cut through the hype and glamour and PR and tell it straight about what’s really going on.

Photo: Wendy Corn

While on one hand I’m going to try and offer some useful advice for those of you motivated and determined to try to make a living (or at least a side income) as a fashion designer I’m also going to try to encourage many of you to stop worrying altogether about extracting dollars and cents profit from your creative endeavors and just enjoy designing and creating fashion for its own sake. That the amateur do-it-yourselfer has just as much - and in some instances more - to contribute to the collective visual sartorial culture as the professionals.

So, what business do I have making such proclamations? Let me share a little of my background. Currently I write a blog  - collectiveselection.com. - which is a byproduct of my masters thesis work in the Textiles and Apparel Program at Cornell University. Collective Selection is a discourse analysis of what other writers and journalists are saying not just about the fashion trends themselves, but the intersection of culture, economics and politics that together create the zeitgeist - or spirit of the times - that those trends reflect.

So today here in 2010 I now have the luxury of watching, wearing and enjoying fashion in the evenings and weekends I’m not at my nice secure business casual day job. But from 1995-2002 I did manage to just barely eek out a living as an independent craft artisan - designing, producing and selling a line of hand dyed wearable art.

The name of my micro business was Colorwheels, and maybe some of you (or your parents) bought a tank top or baby romper from me at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar or any number of local craft shows.

Like many of you, my love of fashion and costume (because for me the line was always pretty blurry) was sparked in high school. Luckily for me, my mother had started teaching me to sew in the second grade, and as soon as I was introduced to the glorious, yet still untapped motherlode of thrift stores in the 80s, it was all over.

Since the small allowance from my hard working yet non indulgent parents combined with the meager paycheck earned checking groceries at Randalls couldn’t even get me in the ring with the popular girl mall princesses - and the identical oversized shaker knit sweaters, acid washed ankle zip guess jeans and hair bows they were all wearing were excruciatingly boring anyways, I decided it would be way more fun to spend that bit of cash on giant bags of vintage finds, get out my scissors and sewing machine and see how I could horrify my conservative mother while at the same time making the halls of high school a whole lot more interesting.

25 years ago refashioning vintage was somewhat of a radical and unusual defiance of the corporate mall culture that completely dominated the fashion choices available at the time. How awesome to look around me today and see refashioned vintage sold in stores, taught in classes, featured in television shows. It’s infiltrating and spreading everywhere as an accepted alternative that continues influence the mainstream.

Over the past 15 years I’ve watched the fashion scene in Austin grow exponentially. Every year there are more and more fashion shows on the calendar, more stores featuring local designers and more places to set up a pop up tent and sell directly to the public.

And this explosion of interest in fashion we see in Austin is our own Texas indie flavored microcosm of a global phenomenon. Whether its new green business models of production or an underground line of clothes that editors are buzzing about or a bold and unusual dress turning heads in a nightclub - the momentum is coming from individuals at the grassroots level pursuing their creative visions. The best the corporate conglomerates of brands beholden to the instant gratification of shareholders can do is try to cool hunt and co-opt the authentic innovation of street style and independent upstarts.

And if you’ve been paying attention to the business news and earnings reports of those big labels and retailers you know that the climate can be described as nervous at best. The PR departments might be exuding optimistic messages in an attempt to fake it til they make it, but the reality itself is actually pretty grim.

Now this is where I venture into my Nouriel Roubini style Dr. Doomsday bit, but stay with me if you would because I promise to end on an optimistic note.

Although there’s lots of interest and excitement about fashion in Austin, the level of production and distribution infrastructure designers need to have a viable professional industry does not currently exist here (yet). But I will argue that this might actually be a good thing because the fashion industry proper like we see in New York and LA today is currently in a lot of trouble.

After the economic meltdown in the Fall of ’08, what do you think was the first thing people stopped buying? You guessed it, new clothes and shoes, especially the frivolous and expensive designer kind. I know there’s a lot of economists out there now talking about green shoots and the road to recovery, but my crystal ball tells me that for the immediate future our economy is in for another big hit at worst, and an anemic slump of unemployment at best.

Last year during New York fashion week I found one fashion writer brave enough to say what nobody else would: that at the shows themselves all too many industry veterans were busy working the room looking for gigs. Trouble is, most of their connections were in the same boat.

And more and more the established design houses are eliminating entry level positions and relying on and unlimited supply of fresh fashion school graduates for unpaid internships.

If you are hoping to make it big in the fashion industry as it exists in America today, I’d say good luck and I sure hope you have genius talent, incredible stamina, golden connections and a wealthy patron.

Now for the good news.

The best news I have is for the amateur do-it-yourselfers. The Blue Hangar still has mountains of discarded potential raw materials for $1.25 a piece, old school heavy duty sewing machines can be found used for under $50, (because really, the vast majority of home sewing machines built after 1975 are junk) and classes, books and websites to teach you to sew are within reach.

When you look back at the history of fashion and the changes in the dominant themes, norms and silhouettes, the most dramatic shifts always come in times of economic and social unrest. Now is the time to push it to the walls, and then push it some more. Enjoy the luxury of taking hours and hours, even days and weeks to painstakingly explore and experiment with techniques that may end up producing only one garment. And once you figure that out to the point where it’s efficient….move on to the next thing that catches your fancy.

I also find the social scene in Austin to be more fun and forgiving and far less judgmental and snobbish than cities where the stakes seem to be higher, like New York or San Francisco. The deliberately casual culture promoted by our own Chamber of Commerce means that one tends to find a broader range of social groups and types within the same venue.

At events like the Treasure City Thrift Fashion show everyone is applauded simply for giving it a shot. So go ahead, take a risk. If people think what you’re wearing is amazing, they’ll come up and tell you themselves. And if they think it’s just awful… well at least you’re keeping it weird!

So let’s say you’ve come up with a fun and unique twist on a garment or accessory, you’ve received lots of positive feedback, you’ve made more than you can wear and give away to friends and now you’re ready to try making a little bit of cash on the side to support your habit. The good news is that today there are stores like Parts and Labour and Moxie and the Compound that want to consign your work and have storefronts with systems and clientele already in place.

And of course I’m sure all of you are familiar with Etsy - the online marketplace that’s gotten many a new designer started with a viable business. But you will soon find out that efficient productions systems are essential to maintaining a profitable business of any size. The first hat is fun to make. And the third might be, too. But the thirtieth? Or the three hundredth? Streamlining is essential to preventing burnout.

The other thing essential to getting people to cross the line and fork over their hard earned dollars for your work - instead of just telling you how awesome they think it is - is that it has to be irresistible. And not just to one person, but to lots of them. Your look has to resonate with the tastes and subconscious desires of at least a niche demographic group.

And it must be well made. Period. Or people will pick it up and put it back or pass over the photo or send it back in the mail. Become skilled in your craft! If you’re making garments, learn to sew! I mean really learn to sew.

And what would I say to those of you who will settle for nothing less than making a living as a full time designer? For those of you determined to give it a shot, nothing I can say will talk you out of it because nothing anyone told me was able to talk me out of it. And boy did I show them! But I do believe that at least for me the naivete and boundless energy of being a twentysomething was essential.

Because you are the ones who are going to have to create your own jobs. To be visionary and creative enough to imagine not only new things to wear, but new models of doing business when the old ones are failing. Right now it’s extremely difficult to compete with the fast fashion monster machine churning out mountains of junky clothes at Forever 21 with exploited labor in third world countries. But do realize that this machine is dependent on key factors like the strength of the dollar, the stability of these other countries, and the low cost of international shipping. All of these factors can - and probably will - change into a whole new context in the coming decade.

In my blog I’m continually finding and posting articles about how luxury is being redefined for the 21st century and the focus is away from logos and bling (that’s so 2007) and towards ‘stealth wealth’ and the unique, one of a kind, handmade item that who’s craftsmanship is evident within the piece itself.

So for starters, learn to manage your money and your business. I know, it’s not the fun part. And if your mind is just too creatively oriented to do that well, you must partner up with someone you can trust to help you do it right. Pay your taxes, people.

Second, understand that at least half - if not more - of your time and energy will be spent hustling to get your product in front of your target audience. The marketplace is glutted with stuff, how is anyone going to find your signal amidst all the noise?

Third, go out and get a copy of Kathleen Fasenella’s “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing.” And read her companion blog - Fashion Incubator. Even if you’re a jeweler, she gives you the straight talk about how to get a product manufactured and marketed.

Whatever way you decide to approach making, finding, assembling, deconstructing and reconstructing clothing and accessories, please keep doing it! Give us something to talk about. Give the trend forecasters something to cool hunt and trickle up so it can trickle back down.

What will the fashion scene in Austin look like a decade from now? I’m waiting for you to show me.

When Simon Doonan, Creative Director of Barney’s, (one of the handful places where fashion forward designers have access to the rare slice of edgy yet wealthy clientele that can afford their pieces), the extremely influential guy who the rest of the fashion industry knows to pay attention to… when Simon Doonan declares The Death of Trends then it’s a zeitgeist shift worth pondering. There are still going to be shapes and norms that we collectively select (whether you follow them or rebel against them) but I see this as more of a backlash against the accelerated cycle of the spending on disposable clothing hamster wheel and a coalescing around an iconic vocabulary of modernist elements; classics that are tweaked and revised with the times.

photo by Roxanna Lowit for the Jewish Daily Forward

Doonan writes for the Observer:

Fashion is no longer icy and aloof. Fashion is a massive, forgiving, ambiguous melting pot where people and trends can dig in their Lee Press-On nails and hang on for years and years without ever being out.

He goes on to list a few examples:

Uggs. Style pundits may have broadcast their out-ness for years, but last week’s snowy streets were packed with Uggs-sporting fashion plates.

There is a delicious personal irony in this example given that back in 2004 Uggs were cited in a lengthy discussion in Fashion Theory class as an example of trendy for trendy’s sake. Even though this trend might have been initiated by celebrity sitings, (so awesome to slip on between takes on outdoor shoots) could it be that they’ve had staying power because those who bought them discovered they were super comfortable and well made and lasted forever?

Skinny jeans. Despite their supposed out-ness, they have managed to become a fashion staple, especially when tucked into riding boots. Tally ho!

Key term, “Fashion Staple.” So they became ‘in’ a few years ago as the bootcut finally reached mass market saturation, but could it be that one fashion staple was traded in for another? Could it be that people want fashion staples?

Filson clothing, used as an example of 'American Workwear' trend on brand consultancy blog "We Are The Market"

Of course, now that the skinny jean is headed for eventual  mass market saturation, it will eventually go the way of the mom jean (which has been ‘out’ almost long enough to be revived…), so it’s not as if the trend cycle is no longer. But given that ‘fast fashion’ retailing cycles had accelerated to the point of new trends every six weeks, could it be that more and more consumers are weary of this and seeking alternatives?

These alternatives - especially to spending too much - have been found for the past few decades in the ‘indie’ and ‘alternative’ subcultures continued fascination with vintage. As these ‘trends’ arise in the vintage industry about which items are hot and eagerly sought after, it was a natural progression for designers to use said items as inspiration for re-issues.

'Lily et Cie' interior from coolspotters.com

Cintra Wilson’s description of the icy snobbery at Lily et Cie in Beverly Hills, is yet another indicator of how vintage clothing continues to increase in value and status while serving as an iconic vocabulary of 20th century sartorial elements to be continually referenced and recombined by modern designers. The inaccessibility to the masses - in both attitude and price - supports the notion of a new definition of luxury for the 21st century:

As luxury seeks to redefine itself in the wake of the conglomerate takeover pandemic, there is, in certain (rich) circles, an increased demand for swanky vintage couture, the rarity of which essentially guarantees that when you sashay down the red carpet, there is no way in tarnation you will be wearing the same dress as Kim Kardashian.

…Even for a Teflon robo-cobra like me who has spent enough time in high-end establishments to have retail nerves like bridge cables, it’s a little hard to breathe in this joint.

It struck me, after my escape, why Lily et Cie has a half-million pieces: Ms. Watnick isn’t selling her formidable collection so much as hoarding it. One senses that she looks upon this mountain of untouchable fashion as her children and is loath to see any of them go.

Following up an earlier post…

Trendy retailers might be hastily hiding their garbage, but disgruntled former employees continue to expose them to the public relations nightmare as the habit of destroying clearance merchandise rather than mark it down too far or donate it to a ‘less than aspirational’ clientele lights up the blogosphere. Jezebel.com cuts right to the chase about the interface between hyperconsumerism and our current fashion system:

But what the problems boil down to is this: for a very long time, the retail economy in the first world has been flooded with product. Inventory was allowed to outstrip demand, because margins were so high that waste became tolerable. (Consumption was rising anyway, because of easy credit and planned obsolescence.) This is true both of disposable clothing chains whose business model counts on an endless cycle of new stuff, and high-end stores whose end-of-season 60% off “sales” don’t even start to bite into wholesale, anyway. In a worthless economy like that, where products that are understood both by their sellers and their buyers to be fundamentally without value are moved around the world to make some already rich men even richer, epic levels of waste are not even an unintended consequence. They’re a design feature.

And over at Alternet, Liliana Segura features interviews with former Anthropologie employees describing the practice:

I was on stock and we were clearing out a bunch of sale items that hadn’t sold. I asked the manager what I should do with the clothing and she said “destroy it.” Destroy it? I asked. Shouldn’t we donate it? ‘No,’ the manager replied, ‘we are only allowed to donate certain items. Corporate policy is to destroy everything else.’

I didn’t have a choice so I did it. Perfectly good shirts, sweaters and pants got ripped, torn and generally wrecked. It was really depressing! Another associate told me they destroy furniture too — almost everything that doesn’t sell. We couldn’t figure out why. Later on another manager told me that Anthro does it to maintain their brand integrity. They don’t want their brands at discount stores or anywhere that would cheapen the brand. Nothing is too common and they want to keep it that way.

NY Times reporter Jim Dwyer who first exposed the story continues to follow the trail with a story profiling an organization set up to provide retailers a systematic way to donate leftovers to the needy. Those who run the clothing bank offer a lot of insight into their suppliers, in particular the role that our familiar friend, aspiration, plays in the fashion retail game:

The reasons are complex. No business wants to compete with its own garbage, or risk having people show up at a store seeking refunds on clothes that were never sold. “That’s why many retailers will damage unsold garments,” said Luis Jimenez, the director of the Clothing Bank, which is now operated for the city by Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment.

Some businesses do not want their goods worn by poor people. Ed Foy, the founder of eFashionSolutions.com, said that brands invest billions of dollars in their images, using models and athletes, which makes them cautious about where donated leftovers might end up. “They want us to see that the people wearing their brands are the people we aspire to be,” said Mr. Foy, a board member of the Clothing Bank. “They want to know, ‘Who’s wearing the clothing and how can that hurt my brand?’ ”

From the outset, the Clothing Bank tried to address the business concerns, Mr. Jimenez said. The warehouse is secure, lowering the chances that the donated clothes would be stolen and resold; only not-for-profit groups receive the distributions, so that, for example, no individual can collect a pallet full of Dress Barn merchandise. Donations are tax-deductible. If a donor wants labels removed, they are cut out by volunteers, including inmates on work release from the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem.

But even that isn’t enough for many brand managers, the luxury ones in particular. Dwyer continues his coverage:

New York City officials destroyed tons of new, unworn clothing and footwear last year that had been seized in raids on counterfeit label operations, abandoning a practice of giving knockoff garments to groups that help the needy.

…

A spokesman for the Police Department said that no one asked for the knockoffs in 2009 — an explanation that was bewildering to the operators of the clothing bank, who run a warehouse that supplies clothing to needy New Yorkers. They said they had made many requests.

“It would be hard to justify taking a truckload of perfectly good clothes and incinerating them, but that’s what’s happening,” said William Montana, a commercial real estate adviser who is on the board of the clothing bank. “The people who had control over giving us that stuff had been really good to us. Now the pipeline has dried up.

…
Many major fashion brands have their headquarters in New York City, and Mr. Bloomberg has made prosecution of trademark infringement a priority for his administration. The companies also take actions in civil court against the pirates, an expensive process, to protect the designers’ names.

“These are people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of them millions, to get counterfeit goods off the street,” said Robert Tucker, a lawyer with the firm of Tucker and Lafiti, whose fashion clients include Chrome Hearts, Steve Madden, Zac Posen and Ed Hardy. “Everyone wants to feed and clothe the homeless. But how are you going to spend all this money and then put it back on the street?”

From the outset, the Clothing Bank tried to address the business concerns, Mr. Jimenez said. The warehouse is secure, lowering the chances that the donated clothes would be stolen and resold; only not-for-profit groups receive the distributions, so that, for example, no individual can collect a pallet full of Dress Barn merchandise. Donations are tax-deductible. If a donor wants labels removed, they are cut out by volunteers, including inmates on work release from the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem.

At the Buffalo Exchange buying counter (image pulled from exploringberkeley.wordpress.com)

I dug up a fantastic article by Reyhan Harmanci for the San Francisco Chronicle, Rag Trade: Cashing in on Vintage, or Just Old, Clothes. The article is written in 2005, but from what I’ve observed personally, here in Austin, the practice of professional pickers selling to BX (Buffalo Exchange) has only grown:

The opportunity to convert used clothing into cash has created a new job: professional seller. Known as “pickers,” professional sellers can be a blessing or a curse to a store, depending on their approach to their line of work and the store’s reliance on their goods. The push and pull at the buy counter between the buyer and seller can be contentious; at its best, it’s a symbiotic relationship, based on a singular love of fashion.

At its worst, it’s a parasitic situation, in which the picker leeches off the store, preying on inexperienced buyers or dealing in stolen merchandise. Buyers, too, can sour the deal by rejecting good clothing to spite the seller or copping an attitude that, as Mascola says, “makes you feel like you’re going to see your social worker.”

Again with the judgement/shame issue I’m mentioned in other BX posts. But where do these professional sellers find enough clothes worthy to pass the knowing eyes of the buyers… and still turn a profit?

Through a friend, he heard that the place to go to was As Is, a nickname for the giant Goodwill on Van Ness and Market streets that wheels out bins of newly donated clothing every morning. “I started to get clued in, looking around at what was current, started reading fashion magazines for inspiration.

“Now I treat it like an art form,” he says, without a smile. Although Mascola has sold clothing at least once a week for six years, it’s never been a full-time job. “The profit margin is too thin; it would be too hard,” he says. “It’s more like a hobby.” He does allow that selling clothes beefs up his income from his retail job in the Castro.

from textile_fetish photostream on flickr

The Austin version of the ‘As Is’ in San Francisco? The Blue Hangar. There, I’ve said it. The secret is out in the open, and surely I’ve made an enemy or two. And the only reason I’m revealing this juicy little secret (that’s sort of out and about with the insiders, anyways) is because my day job prevents me from regular digs and pays me enough to just go buy the stuff for a higher price all pre-picked and sized at BX anyways.

The Blue Hangar on Springdale is supposedly where the clothes that have been sitting unsold on the racks for over three weeks at the regular Goodwills go to be tossed in piles on giant tables and sold for $1.25 a piece. They clear the tables and replace with fresh stock once, sometimes twice, a day and at that point the still unsold goods are compacted into bales and sold as such, often to third world countries. But a few years ago on one particularly stellar run, I quizzed the employee checking me out about the sources and she told me that often when the Goodwill stores were full and they were getting more donations than the stores could process, they’ll send the overflow straight to the Blue Hanger, unsorted. Ah ha! I knew the things that I found wouldn’t have lasted three weeks in the Goodwill store. So folks, right at the end of the month when everyone is moving and ditching stuff is THE time to hit the Blue Hanger.

I’ve shopped there for years, and during my last unemployment stint I’d go and load up with a combination of items for myself… and items to sell at BX. It’s super tricky, because you really have to know what those buyers want. I was pretty much able to break even and cover my costs of the whole run, but then again I took BX credit not cash. I was still out a wee bit of cash overall, but got to shop at BX basically for the cost of my time. I’d occasionally see BX employees there digging, too, but my costumer friend who’s there all the time has said that recently its intensified. And on a recent BX sell, I got into a conversation with a buyer who told me about a friend who was supporting her live music/drinking habit through selling finds from the Blue Hanger to BX.

Which brings up an accusation I’ve heard many times that BX employees favor their friends, or friends of friends, or ‘cool people’ when buying. (more…)

How did we live before Google? A blog search turned up this fabulous insider post from Indiana Adams of Adored Austin: Indiana worked at Buffalo Exchange (heretofore abbreviated as ‘BX’) as a buyer, so she knows of what she speaks. It’s so good I’m going to block quote most of it:

I’ll admit that selling your clothes to Buffalo Exchange can be a little bit daunting. The worst is when you go in with several trash bags full of clothes and the buyer maybe buys the one thing that you threw in there as a joke and then passes on all your really awesome stuff that you thought for sure they’d offer you a billion dollars for. Then you have to do the walk of shame to your car with your bags still full!

Indiana Adams sports an outfit on her blog, 'Adored Austin'

Kids, you’re not alone in that walk of shame. Remember, this is coming from a buyer.

Believe me, this happens way more often than not, but it’s not because they crazy fashionista behind the counter hates your guts and despises your personal style. If they’re passing on things that you think they should have bought, here’s some reasons why:
1. They may already have a lot of what you’re selling in the store.
2. The store could be really, really full so they’ve been instructed to be incredibly selective until the racks empty up a bit.
3. The items you’re selling may not be in season, yet.

Since I’ve never been afraid to strike up a friendly, non-defensive chat with the buyers du jour, I’ve heard them tell me (and others) much of the same thing. And a little personal observation? Even though it’s not supposed to matter which buyer you get and they do a whole lot of second opinions with each other… it totally matters which buyer you get. The fashion eye is a subjective thing. period.

Before I worked there, it was hard to sell there. For me, my clothes are an extension of who I am. If they didn’t buy my clothes, that means they didn’t like my clothes, and that means that they don’t like the way I dress, and that means they don’t like me, and that means I should just go eat worms and cry in a corner.

Exactly. So well put, Indiana. This is why my friends who’ve felt the sting of the walk of shame can get forever soured. But to their credit, I noticed that a few years ago when I returned to Austin after a few years away at grad school, the buyers were now making a deliberate effort to be nice and kind, even if there was sometimes a bit of strain, kinda like a waitress voice. (I don’t blame them one bit, I’ve been a waitress…)

But after I worked there, I found out that there’s just so much more to it than that. And besides, there’s no reason to be embarrassed if the buyer doesn’t buy your stuff. One time a dude came in with (this is not a joke!) two trash bags full of jock straps and sweat socks. Those are the kind of people who should be embarrassed. I mean, really. What in the world was he doing with so many jock straps? And why in the world did he think I’d be able to resell them at Buffalo Exchange? Um, gross.

Really? Wow. Someone buy those kids and industrial strength mega bottle of Purell, please!

Austin Buffalo Exchange

This will be the first post in a series exploring both the behind the scenes mechanics as well as cultural implications of the buying process at Buffalo Exchange. I’ll also be repeatedly stating, for the record, that if you give me $100 to spend on clothing in one store in Austin, it would be Buffalo Exchange - it’s my favorite place to shop and I always consider it a triumph to trade in as much - or even more - than I spend on merchandise. I have, as such, always harbored a keen fascination for the buying process - both from the perspective of a seller as well as an armchair urban fashion anthropologist.

Today I’m going to highlight some excerpts from a Time Magazine article I dug up from a couple of years ago that articulates the psychology of seller’s anxiety. Anita Hamilton writes in The New Trend of Used Clothes:

Viki Stevenson stands behind the counter, passing fashion judgment.

With the rare exception of those fashionistas who’s entire bag gets bought, anyone who’s ever sold to ‘The Buffy’ knows this feeling. And speak with anyone who’s had their entire bag (or the vast majority of it) rejected and they might just go off on a tirade somewhat similar in tone to telling the story of being rejected at a party by someone you were trying to chat up. People take it personally; I know I have, even though I understand that they have a business imperative to buy what they know will sell. Still, it is a judgement of one’s taste - do you have so many fabulous clothes that the ones you’re tired of still maintain cash value? Or are your cast offs long since out of fashion or even worse, never in style to begin with.

It can provoke all those junior high anxieties of being judged and teased by ‘the cool kids’, even if you supposedly didn’t care what they had to say.

This quickening cycle of fashion lets secondhand stores be pickier than ever. Unlike nonprofits such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army, which accept most donations, the fast-fashion resale shops typically buy only about 5% of the apparel that people bring into the store. It can be a humbling experience for a novice seller, who may find herself leaving the shop with the same bag of castoffs that she walked in with.

Only 5%? I had no idea, I’d love to find out more details on that statistic. Now I don’t feel as bad when they only take about a third of what I bring in.

And it also speaks to the fact that even though recycling is the eco thing to do, most of the clothes hanging on the racks *new* don’t have enough fashion mojo to hold their value and make it through the gatekeepers to have a second life… that someone will pay for. To those who are feeling the sting of rejection, think about this - if Buffalo Exchange took most of what people brought in, it would look a heck of a lot like Goodwill.

The rise of fast fashion, which uses a speeded-up production cycle to rush designer-inspired clothes to moderately priced retailers like Zara and H&M, has breathed new life into secondhand stores like Buffalo Exchange by boosting their supply of barely worn apparel. “H&M is our bread and butter,” says Stevenson, 27, as she flips through a carousel of blouses from H&M, American Apparel, Benetton and the Gap with prices ranging from $7.50 to $14 apiece.

Since more shoppers are loading up on cheap chic every few weeks instead of purchasing a few higher-priced basics once every few months, they’re less sentimental about quickly unloading them to help finance the next round.

But what happens when people stop buying as much fast fashion? I love recycling, don’t get me wrong, but ever since my first thrift forays 2 decades ago I’ve been keenly aware that my opportunities as such - to recycle but still be fashionable - are entirely dependent on others excessive consumerism. As soon as that starts to dip, it’s going to be a lot more competitive - and expensive to find the finds.

Coinciding with the revival of swing dancing over a decade ago, there has been a continual stream of articles alerting us to the popularity of vintage clothing in contemporary fashion. Unlike trends that disappear in a season or two, the interest in and demand for quality vintage has only increased. Given the fact that there is an absolutely finite supply of clothing made in 1955 (or any other year), it was inevitable that archival remakes would appear on the scene.

House of Vionnet 2007

The fashion industry right now seems poised in a moment of cognitive dissonance - watching the hype machine formula that served them so well contract and crumble around them, nervous about committing to a new direction while knowing that their survival depends on it. While there are no doubt many independent designers who relish striking forward into new visions for 21st century, the business machinery who back the vast majority of manufacturing and distribution are groping for a sure thing.

In her article for the Financial Times, Nicola Copping explains “fashion’s love affair with reinventing its own past:”

“The demand for archive pieces is huge in the fashion market,” says Jean Bousquet, managing director of Cacharel, which launched a vintage collection, in collaboration with Liberty, to celebrate its 50th anniversary in April. “We are arriving at the end of a fashion cycle; there has been nothing very new for a long time and a general tiredness has been established. The comeback of vintage testifies to a passion for the renewal of the past. We look at past successes to create the new. We might do several more archive collections in the future.”

It seems contradictory that the antidote to tiredness and lack of newness would be to remake old pieces rather than innovate new ways of dressing. But perhaps the sameness and monotony lamented refers more to what’s hanging on the racks in the mall right now - hundreds of thousands of similar versions of the same WGSN trend dictated pattern blocks. Against that backdrop, an dress from the fifties seems intricate and novel by comparison. Not to mention nostalgic:

“With all the recent concerns in the economy, people are feeling a bit nostalgic; they are looking to brands they can trust, who have a significant heritage and who offer great quality and value,” says Sir Stuart Rose, executive chairman of M&S…After all, when the future is uncertain, why not rely on the stability of the past?

It makes me wonder, though, how this demand for archival quality vintage remakes fits in with Cathy Horyn and Simon Doonan’s observations I quoted in an earlier post:

“It’s impossible to think of something you can drag out from the land of naffness and make cool,” Mr. Doonan said, referring to the process by which banal or out-of-date styles are brought back and, after much analysis and decoding and finally brand approval, become fashionable. He offered up the drop-waist denim dress, a wholesome style from the ’80s, saying it was rife with ironic potential.

I laughed. That was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

When the term ‘vintage’ has reached the point where it is applied to intricately tailored designer suits from the forties and the pilled rayon floral drop yoked dresses from the early nineties all over the racks of ‘vintage’ stores on South Congress alike, it’s time to dig deeper and get more specific.

At which point I venture into subjective commentary that threatens to reveal the inner old lady I’m cultivating, who’s ever so sure that things were much better in her day… (more…)

from an old Anthropologie catalog

When I first read the WWD article, Anthropologie Engages Shoppers with Craft Workshops, (the store was hosting a series of ‘reinvention workshops’ teaching customers to make gifts from articles they already had in their closets) I was perplexed, and more than a little suspicious. Why would a company whose core strategy is to sell this vintage, crafty, nostalgic boho aesthetic for a hefty premium encourage people to circumvent their cash registers?

At the December workshops, customers learned how to refashion blouses, rework cardigan sweaters, revamp gloves and hats and renew scarves…Other seminars were devoted to making hair accessories, wrapping packages with scarves, reinventing plush toys and revitalizing ornaments.

…the reinvention workshops “aren’t designed to sell anything,” said Wendy Wurtzburger, Anthropologie’s chief merchandising officer, explaining that the goal is to teach women how to get more out of the existing items in their wardrobes.

Really? The chief merchandising officer is defying the message of overconsumption to teach women to get more out of what they already have?

From a post on Jezebel.com

The retailer said giving new life to old things is especially relevant given the state of the economy, adding that customers will discover how “extraordinary and meaningful a hand-crafted, remade gift can be.”

But… doesn’t that just highlight how extraordinarily unmeaningful gifts purchased in a chain store showcasing a non existent lifestyle and made by sweatshop workers are? (more…)