Secrets of Thrifting : Better Isn't Always Best

I recently acquired two shaggy Shetland sweaters, on separate occasions, in the same thrift store, for the same price. This is something of a score, as I find good sweaters are among the hardest things to come by in these places. A good sweater is like an old friend, and I think many people hold on to them until they reach the end of their usefulness, eventually becoming too moth eaten or perhaps accidentally shrunken in the wash. If those two things don't kill a good sweater, then the hangers that most thrift shops display them on will almost certainly throw them out of shape. But now and again, they do turn up.

The navy blue one is the real thing, and iconic J. Press "Shaggy Dog", highly coveted by preppy/trad/ivy/whatever enthusiasts everywhere. I've wanted one for ages, but never owned one, as even on sale the price of these things is prohibitively expensive. Last I checked, $139 was a sale price direct from J. Press, and even on the internet folks are getting upwards of $100 at auction.

The second is something of a knockoff from the defunct (and soon to be collectible?) Ralph Lauren "Rugby" line. Made in China, but just as shaggy, and rendered in a classic shade of burgundy. This one had silly elbow patches on it, but it was nothing that ten minutes with the seam ripper couldn't cure.

Of course, anyone's initial inclination would be to assume that the J.Press is the superior sweater, but it may not necessarily be so in this case. Note that both are size "large", an arbitrary designation at best. The Rugby sweater fits me perfectly, with a hem that falls right at the belt line and just enough room to move without being so bulky as to fit under a tweed jacket. The Press sweater is enormous, with a hen that falls almost two inches longer and so much bulk under the arms as to be tight under my Barbour. I've worn each of them, and I hate to say that I feel frumpy in the Press sweater, and the Rugby has fast become a new favorite.

Thrift stores have a way of leveling the playing field. In truth, the provenance of these two garments clearly means the press sweater is "better". But in some cases, by the time a thing has been purchased, used and donated to charity, it's original provenance becomes less meaningful. A great item will always be a great item, but a lesser item becomes not so bad when it's no longer on display in some awful macro-store, at some inflated price. For the same price in a thrift store, the difference in quality of these two sweaters becomes almost negligible, but at full retail it would be hard to justify choosing the lesser item. I've said it so many times, but it bears repeating to mention that brand allegiance can be a stumbling block in the thrift store, causing you to choose a less than flattering garment because the name is better. I'm not suggesting the you should settle for less, but rather that there's a degree of relativity that needs to be taken into account in a thrift store. It's worth remembering that no matter where you purchase your clothes or how much you spend on them, fit is always the most important consideration.

 In the end, I won't be keeping the J. Press sweater, instead getting to a larger man who will look better in it. I'll keep the Rugby, happy to have given my money to charity to get it. Better isn't always best the second time around.

Reader Questions (on orphans)

photo badly taken "in the field", via phone

Thrift shops can be a full with hidden treasure, but they are jammed to the gunwales with exponentially more incomplete things. So what does one do when confronted by a high quality part of an incomplete whole?

Reader Derek writes:

Hi, I've been getting amazing deals on suit coats (Brioni, Canali) or blazers but they are orphaned (that's why I call em blazers now).

They are solid colored (one is blue and one is black). If I purchase some pants of the same brand/line (Brioni/Canali) or different brand such as J.crew,

BUT the pants have the same weight/material and color as the blazers...could I pull off making a suit with these separates with maybe some alterations in stitching and buttons?

I am desperate in trying to make this work, so any suggestions please let me know.

and reader Michael writes:

Recently, I picked up half a Henry Poole suit--beautiful navy wool, with thin chalk stripes every half inch. I've written to Henry Poole to ask if there's any chance that they might still have the material-it seems fairly classic-- so that I might have a pair of matching trousers made. But I recognize how unlikely this is.  I know you've talked about orphans in the past, but can't recall if you ever found it possible to get away with an unholy marriage of a coat such as the one I have with, say, appropriately weighted gray flannel trousers. It does seem a shame never to wear this wonderful piece of cloth. If it were solid, you might regard it as a navy blazer, but those think lines give the game away.

I find myself confronted with this problem quite often, particularly in the matter of suit jackets missing trousers. Many men with jobs still requiring suits tend to take off their jacket as soon as they reach the office, wearing it only in transit and for meetings. The result is suits with trousers that are more worn than their matching coats, and many "orphaned" suit coats wind up donated alone. This is generally, though perhaps not always, the kiss of death. In rare instances the top half of a suit can live on as a sports coat. A navy,glen check, or tweed jacket can sometimes receive new life with new buttons. Brass or knotted leather work best, as these are rarely seen on suits. Summer fabrics such as seersucker or poplin can scoot by as well. Charcoal grey or anything pinstriped, however, will always look like half a suit. 

Michael's question serves to illustrate a particular kind of heartbreak one can encounter in this situation. He found a coat of unimpeachable good quality from a storied producer on Savile Row. Pictured above is the top half of a navy pinstriped suit by H. Huntsman and Sons I recently found, sans trousers. Michael bought his, hoping to resurrect it somehow. In my case, I took mine with me to the trousers, searching for its mate. Suits frequently become separated in thrift shops, and I have reunited more than a few. This time I was unsuccessful, and so I left the coat behind. Broke my heart, but it will never anything more than half of a suit, and no well dressed man would wear such a thing, despite its provenance.

Derek's question poses a different problem. In his case, he found two coats which may well work alone, with perhaps a change to more casual buttons.I might try brown horn on the black coat and white on the blue coat. As for matching them with other trousers and faking a suit,the answer is emphatically no. Better to work with what you have than to fake it.

As much as we may want to salvage every quality scrap we find in thrift shops, your closet shouldn't be an orphanage. I've said it before, but learning to be extremely pick is a key element to thrift shopping well, and avoiding hoarding. Sometimes (frequently), you just have to say no.

"Where do you find this stuff?"

I get asked that questions a lot, right a long with requests for the detailed locations, complete with driving directions, of my favorite thrift shops. But I never tell.

There's an old rule among inveterate thrift shoppers that you never give up your best spots, because once you do, they get mined to death. Its a rule I still abide, and I realize that it tends to drive some of you mad. I get accused of hogging all the good stuff. But truthfully, that old rule is pointless these days. My continued adherence to it is sheer nostalgia. You see, in the old days, thrift stores were found through hard work and luck. You stumbled on them, mostly. And when you found one, nobody else knew. Those days are gone.

Yesterday, I hauled three big bags from three different stores, two of which I'd never heard of before. I found them using Google on a smart phone. Its that easy. There are even websites with directories on them where you only need the zip code or name of the town to find them. My adherence to an archaic rule may be silly, but so is asking me to hold your hand in finding these places. Its nothing short of a luxury to live in the information age, and I'm just old enough to remember what it was like before.

No, its not just because I know where these places are or how to find new ones that I do so well. It's about perseverance. Besides finding and visiting new stores yesterday, I also spent all morning in the highway far from home driving to them. I did this not knowing whether I'd find anything. Fortunately, I did, but I might just as easily have struck out. Good thing I enjoy the hunt almost as much as the kill. It simply does not work if you only pop into some place, and only one place, every now and again. You have to be crazy enough to give it a lot of your time. 

So that's "where I find this stuff". I hope this didn't come off all sour grapes, because that wasn't my intention. But seriously, begging me to tell you where the good thrift stores are and believing that if I don't you'll never find them is a silly as saying you'll never eat again unless I point you to the nearest pizza joint.

You gotta do your own homework.

Secrets of Thrifting : The Olde Village Church

There's a lot of downright silly New England WASP sycophancy around men's clothing blogs, and I generally try to avoid it here. I've said so often that though many of the things I like may have been largely enjoyed by a certain narrow slice of East Coast society, I never found membership in any such group to be an exclusive requirement to anything. For one thing, as a good friend who is in fact from an old WASP family once said, more people had the values than had the money anyway. For another, we all dressed like this around Boston when I was a kid. Even immigrant Catholic mothers bought whale embroidered pants for their boys to wear on Easter Sunday, because, you know, that's what the stores were selling. However,

when you're on the coast of Maine, in a town full of old early Victorian houses with a small harbor full of sail boats, and the village church is an austere white clapboard building like this...

and that church is, of course, Protestant, and old, you know you're in good thrift shop territory, if you can find a thrift shop.

When that thrift shop is in fact run by the church and housed in the old colonial next door, you've hit what unwashed bottom feeders like me call The Jackpot.  A whiff, just a whiff, of that WASP sycophancy may be needed to make my point here.

Lots of people will offer the advice that when thrift shopping the best goods are to be found in affluent neighborhoods. While that's true, it only tells part of the tale. Besides finding an affluent neighborhood with a local charity, you need to find a neighborhood where the affluent people are buying the things that you want. For me, that means finding old Protestant neighborhoods like this one. I know that generations of men who have lived hear dressed in a typical East Coast way. I know that there will be lots of Brooks Brothers, J. Press, and things from small local shops in the same vein. Good old Yankee Thrift means not only that when the time comes to donate, it will go to the local Church, but also that the likely of finding rare older items will increase. I suppose the Rule Of Thrifting here is Always Shop at the old Church. Salvation Army, Goodwill, or Savers might have some good stuff the day you walk in...or not. The Church store run by kindly old ladies from the parish will have only good stuff. At least that's been my experience with these places.

This shop was bursting with it. After only half an hour, my arms were laden with more than I could carry to the counter. I say counter, but really it was an old desk set up in the foyer of this old house. One kindly old lady offered to let me look around the back room at the items not yet tagged for sale. Another half an hour, another weighty armload of stuff. As I dug deep into a plastic bin full of ties, another old lady offered me a brownie. Delicious.

As for the haul, I was giddy. Being as seasoned a thrift shopper as I am, I rarely get as big of a "thrill of the hunt" rush as this place gave me. I was giddy as I hauled an entire contractor bag of clothes over one shoulder to my car.  And that's just what I took in men's clothing. The books were great, because the same people that donate these good clothes also tend to read well. The housewares were terrific. And the fact that I was handing my money to a volunteer from a local church and that the whole thing was one giant act of recycling on everybody's part made the situation a win for everyone involved. That's something that no retail shop can give you.









Secrets of Thrifting: Keep an Open Mind

It's been interesting to watch the explosion of menswear writing online over the past few years in the form of blogs, fora, and other sites. Along with that, its been gratifying for a guy like me to realize that he's "not the only one" who cares about this stuff. Apparently, far from it, in fact. More and more men, especially younger ones, seem to be taking an active interest in how they present themselves, and with it has come some small return to a gentility we've been lacking for too long. Bravo!

There is, of course, a down side to this. There is an underlying tendency among many of these online resources to encourage personal pigeon holing. The "preppy" guys only do preppy, and are ready at a moments notice to decry anything that falls outside of their own iron clad code of rules. So too the European tailoring guys, the British Savile Row guys, and so forth. Heaven help the fellow who dares to appreciate more than one school of thought, or worse, actually attempt to combine them within his own wardrobe. It borders on fetishism. This kind of close-mindedness will only spell defeat for anyone attempting to build a suitable wardrobe built on thrift shop finds and ingenuity. Keeping an Open Mind may in fact be rule #1 of successful thrifting.

For today's example, I offer this jacket.  100% silk tweed by Polo, made in USA, $5.49. I suspect given its US provenance that this coat dates from the 1990s some time. Generally speaking, I prefer a natural shoulder, undarted, three button jacket. This coat has a more built up shoulder, hanging a bit off my natural shoulder in a soft drape kind of way. It's two button and darted, with a lower button gorge and a high cut notch in the lapel. It's also a hair tight, but that's what happens when 80 plus temperatures hit you two months before you've gotten into your "Summer body". Hell, I only got the bikes out three days ago.

Its even got four button cuffs, a veritable sacrilege to the "Ivy" crowd. It's not "preppy", it's not "Ivy", it's barely "Trad", and because it's Polo, a million other nitpickers will find ways to hate it. Those are the things it ain't.

What it is is a well made jacket rendered in beautiful silk tweed in my size for less than ten bucks. A perfect coat for an unseasonably warm day in March. It looks well paired with a white shirt with short pointed spread collar (not a rolling button down) and an Italian knit tie.

Adding insult to injury are the forward pleats and side tabs on these Italian made Ralph Lauren pants.

My point is this: I may generally prefer a style based on the basic tenets of American traditional tailoring, but I won't toss an item away out of hand if it happens to lie just outside of those guidelines. Nice clothes are nice clothes, and fortunately for men, the minute details that differentiate one style from another are just that: minute. Truth be told, the only people likely to notice these little things are fellow clothing dorks. The rest of the world just sees a guy who looks nice in nice clothes. Additionally, real style is found in easy blending of various elements, not in rigid adherence to secret codes. In that regard, being at the chaotic mercy of the thrift store can actually help a man sharpen his skills in a way that makes his eye keen and his choices solid.

All this only works if you keep an open mind.