Confessions of a secondhand shopaholic
One of my new year's resolutions last year was to “Grow my collection of vintage/designer pieces.” Among other goals like “Not be late so much” which I swiftly broke, this is one of the handful that actually worked (to the detriment of my wallet). In the past year, I haven’t gone longer than six weeks without contributing to my closet — if I include jewelry — which was exacerbated by the weekend job I took at a mid to high-end consignment store. If it weren’t for the draining nature of eight-hour retail shifts, I would leave each shift with a new item.
The exponential growth in my closet is in stark contrast to a two year shopping dearth, in which I could count on one hand the amount of clothing I added to my closet per year. For more than half of this time I was living out of two suitcases in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
I learned much about my personal style during the past year of shopping, primarily through trial and error: I hate jeans, heels, v-necks, three-quarter length sleeves, and most animal prints and I refuse to buy coats and shoes secondhand online. Thus, this year I want to take all that I’ve learned by spending my money and see what I can learn by spending little money.
By nature I am cheap. I have never called a taxi, I only buy generic groceries with the exception of Pink Lady apples, and I never order takeout. In the past year, my stinginess morphed into an oxymoron; I won’t pay an extra dollar for a large coffee but will easily drop $20 on a sterling silver bracelet. This is (in kindergarten appropriate terms) silly business.
My ironic money logic means that I am more inclined to spend money on tangible items rather than food and experiences. Additionally, I have the “I can make anything work” curse, also known as “the vision” in more positive terms. Last year, I was deeply tempted by the $100 retail Aespa collaboration Crocs to the dismay of my friends and family. However deeply impractical and so not worth it, I still think they’re cute.
Having “the vision” is partially creativity but also a susceptibility to marketing. To market products, luxury brands will build a brand identity centered around lifestyle. By creating worlds around their products, brands can sell a narrative as opposed to just items. Notable luxury campaigns that emphasize lifestyle are: the Louis Vuitton Core Values Campaign, including a picture of soccer icons Zidane, Pelé, and Maradona playing foosball in a cafe with their LV suitcases and duffels sitting in the corner; the Balenciaga Adidas collaboration, with celebrities like Bella Hadid and Isabelle Huppert wearing sportswear in upscale corporate offices; and most recently, Bottega Veneta’s A$ap Rocky campaign that pictured staged paparazzi shots. Rocky jogging, Rocky with his kid, Rocky getting groceries, etc. The whole gamut of the Rockyverse.
Such narratives are appealing, portraying a “just out of reach” type of lifestyle. I could take my hypothetical LV trunk on my next trip abroad, or my nonexistent Balenciaga Le City Bag to the office, or my fictional Bottega Andiamo bag grocery shopping.
Additionally, many luxury brands sell to consumers by approaching their spheres of pre-existing consumption and recognition. There is the more traditional route of celebrity-fronted campaigns and in recent years, brands have gone around the world to select new faces for their advertising. The recent Prada holiday campaign featured actress Maya Hawke and K-pop idol Karina of Aespa sitting at the same table, chatting among robots and panettone. Front rows at Milan or Paris Fashion Week are like scrolling through Tiktok: Omar Apollo next to Sabrina Carpenter who is next to Kevin Abstract. The Loewe crossover episode is wild. Brands may also take the collab route, partnering with companies that attract a different niche of consumers. Ugg, of sheepskin boot notoriety, and Telfar, a brand known for its vegan leather tote dubbed “the Bushwick Birkin,” have collaborated on a yearly basis since 2021, producing sold out collections combining the characteristics of Ugg boots and Telfar bags in different ways.
As much as I enjoy seeing Anne Hathaway and A$ap Rocky meet Yeonjun from Tomorrow x Together at a Moncler event, there is no way I will ever buy a Moncler jacket because I think they are stupidly expensive. However, such collaborations and brand ambassadorships subconsciously alter my perspective on the brand. I’ll never walk into the Balenciaga store and leave with a brand new Le City bag because the current iteration of Balenciaga does not align with my values and I won’t support them with my money, but their marketing does some work in the back of my mind to increase their brand recognition overall. I may not purchase from Balenciaga in actuality but I may look for a Le City bag on the secondhand market. By increasing brand recognition, the company can convince different niches of consumers of the value of their products, whether such clients buy new or secondhand.
The corporatization of fashion also must be considered. LVMH is such a behemoth of a parent company that it’s somewhat parodied in the Netflix series Emily in Paris as “JVMA,” a corporation threatening to tank the quality of the most iconic of fashion houses, the fictional Pierre Cadault. Even today, I woke up to news of Kapital Jeans being acquired by LVMH. Japanese denim enthusiasts were distraught.
Evidently, LVMH is not the only major corporation lurking in fashion, as there is Kering, OTB, Fast Retailing, Richemont, Capri Holdings, and so on. An “alternative” consumer may not purchase a Diesel belt or Amiri jeans because they believe it to be overplayed, but they will buy Margiela tabi shoes. Diesel, Amiri, and Margiela are owned by the OTB group. The Diesel belt and the tabi boot also signify the wearer’s membership to different communities or their interests. I expect an Amiri and Diesel belt wearing man to have invested in cryptocurrency and listen to Drake, while I would imagine a guy owning tabi boots to be into Japanese denim and listen to The Internet. OTB, like LVMH, is able to attract different niches of consumers, who value different things, through their brand offerings.
In the 2009 movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, Rebecca Bloomwood (the shopaholic) writes in her column that “cost and worth are very different things.” She comes to this conclusion after a sample sale, realizing that yes she did in fact physically fight someone over a pair of Pucci boots and that the “cashmere” sweater she bought was 95 percent acrylic. The boots and sweater eventually became just “stuff” to Rebecca. This isn’t to say that possessions are devoid of personal meaning, but that they become mundane and no longer representative of the aspirations they once stood for.
What is the worth of a luxury product that becomes mundane? Rebecca goes to great lengths to purchase a green scarf before an interview because it comes to symbolize a new life she was going to lead as a writer at Alette, her dream fashion magazine. She paid a high cost for the worth she perceived the scarf to have. The green scarf later becomes part of her moniker for her column at Successful Saving. Towards the end of the movie, she auctions off the scarf to pay her credit card debt, and turns out her love interest bought it back for her. The scarf is a sort of mutating metaphor throughout the movie, changing in meaning as Rebecca develops.
Despite the lack of a central narrative and plot devices in my very real and very mundane life, my possessions can also change in meaning and their significance is in no way correlated to their cost. The value my closet has can only be determined by myself and I am intrigued to further develop my wardrobe’s meaning during 2025 by shopping less.