It began, as all terrible ideas start, at 1 AM on a Tuesday after I’d had three glasses of wine and too much time on my hands. I was lost in TikTok oblivion watching those sweatshirt tutorial videos where makeup-less, ageless girls throw effortlessly cool clothes around their bodies that retail for more than my monthly rent. You know the ones I’m talking about: “Just gonna throw this on before I go to brunch!” they exclaim while putting on sunglasses in their car with $200 dollar jeans hanging low around their unnecessarily lean figure. “This is ridiculous,” I screamed at my cat Maurice who was eyeing me funny from atop my unfolded laundry pile. “No one looks like this when they’re getting ready to go somewhere on a Tuesday.” Maurice gave me an exasperated look that could only be communicated through the slow blink of a feline and immediately judged me for watching video number 27 about this topic.
Fair point, Mr. Fluffypants. So here I was, livid yet fully entertained by these get ready with me influencer montages.
Then it hit me like a Flash Sale on YOOX: what if I tried to do this myself—but with only thrifted items? As someone who’s written literally hundreds of words about sustainability and responsible consumption I was providing attainable content, right?
Solving world hunger was clearly not going to happen tonight, but giving you bougie boomerangs steeped in realism?
I could totally do that. Maurice sighed and rolled his eyes so hard I think he may have conjured a vortex into another dimension. Cue me staying up until 4 AM trying to find Blow founder Kristin Salveson’s total outfit—which consisted mainly of items I wouldn’t recognize if they punched me in the face—if she wore it secondhand.
By 1: 30 AM I had scoured my favorite TikTok haulistas and bookmarked five standby glam girls whose gets ready with mes I would be cloning come daylight. By 1: 45 I had emailed Katherine, my editor, concocting this as a bonafide article rather than the laughable sham it would inevitably become. By 2 AM I was passed out with my phone shoved up my nostril like some sort of high-tech crank.
Miraculously, Katherine gave the green light with zero questions asked. Her emails usually consist of, “Who are you talking to?” and “Literally yes or no.” So when I received “Sounds fun! Keep receipts!
Don’t spend >$300.” I freaked out and immediately printed my grocery-sized shopping bag from Target. (I promise we’ll get to receipts.) Challenge accepted. Girl 1: Lauren McNamara Dubbed the “California girl” of the influencer world, wellness junkie Lauren McNamara touts an “effortless” surfbrand obsession and enough colloidal silver to launch into an entirely new constellation. Watching her get ready is like watching a yoga-fitness-wellness-cult concoction hybrid where she somehow finds time to apply $250 worth of mascara while hopping between Silk Wood surfboards wearing a $300 grassroots dress that doesn’t look at all like it shrunk in the wash.
The holy grail piece in her most recent get ready with me involved a sand-colored linen slip-and-top set from Brandon Maxwell that costs more than both of my sofas combined. And just like that—with a screenshot of her TikTok and zero actual game plan—I was off to Metropolitan Avenue’s finest thrift shop: Goodwill. Hours—and five other thrift shops later—I was sweating bullets.
Literally. Someone get this girl some air conditioning. After rifling through rack after rack of beige linen-esque materials I was ready to give up.
I found an actual slip dress once (from Abercrombie & Fitch, ironically) that would have paired well with this whole aesthetic…but alas it was donated without the matching top. Close enough, I thought…but then my eyes fell upon a dream: high-low cream polyester pants with an elastic waistband that could comfortably fit all five members of my family for dinner, and a slightly yellow, silk slip blouse. “Bet”—I yelled to myself triumphantly, tossing them into my reusable bag along with an artisanally rusty gold necklace that would no doubt leave a bruise around my neck by noon—“Lauren would.” Total pants-and-blouse-cost: $12.99. An entire week’s worth of groceries, but still.
VICTORY. Sweat-drenched and prideful, I sprinted home to recreate my very own get ready with me. Putting my phone atop a precarious pile of Vogue Japan copies I positioned the camera at ‘anglesmalltalkgivesyou acne’ height and started trying things on.
The pants were where it all went wrong. See, polyester pants from the 1990s do not agree with my leo presentation. Upon sitting down for 30 seconds I was statically charged enough to lick my own elbows. “Hey guys, kinda just getting ready to run some errands!” I chirped into my webcam like a motherboard-less rotweiller. “These thrifted pants are so meeee!” The pants were screaming bloody murder against my silk blouse and I could feel fat stains forming all over my butt from the way they were rubbing together.
After wrestling around with said pants for approximately 27 minutes and having to wipe sweat off my face every five seconds (this blouse was also not breathable) I decided to face the music: I had failed miserably. Girl 2: Madison Taylor Rack after rack. Day after day.
Target after Macy’s after Target. Thrifting without a game plan is like chewing on a sugarless piece of gum that’s slowly losing flavor—it sucks and you know there’s nothing you can do about it. Marie Claire hadn’t led me to nor had TikTok sent word that Brandon Maxwell-esque slip dresses were trending at Metropolitan Goodwill.
This time I was going to be strategic. I loaded up on notable keywords and brandished myself with the Marisalen manifesto before patrolling Targetish thoroughfares during off-peak hours. After googling, “High waist mom jeans near me,” for the fourth time that morning I felt confident in my next outfit attempt.
Madison Taylor was the GOAT of “luxury activewear” and could convince you that her everyday consists mainly of cute cashmere joggers and ugly sneakers. Her most recent video showcased her “easy-going weekend look”— a $400 TOMS Factory destroyed jean and cashmere sweater combo that to the naked eye could easily be mistaken for adult pajamas. Destination thrift store number two was Real Real vintage on Bedford Avenue.
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Now, anyone who’s spent any amount of time digging through vintage threads knows: East Village thrift shops are synonymous with tourist-y clothes that are either tattered or severely overpriced. Target 2.0, “Madison.” Let’s do this. Luckily for me I struck denim heaven at L Train Vintage—a small second-hand shop off of Metropolitan Avenue that had, remarkably, preserved a pair of legit good Levi’s from circa 1995.
They were two sizes too big, but who’s counting? ! (these pants truly did RIP all over town.) I looped a chambray blue shirt shirtbandana thing around my waist for authenticity. Although they sagged harder than Valerie From Beavis and Butt-head’s posterior there was no stopping me. Not when I found THE perfect cashmere sweater at Urban Jungle oh-so coincidentally located right across the street.
Slightly pilled? Who cares?! It actually fit!
And was super soft! A mere $15—and definitely worth the hole under the arm. “I loveeee throwing on these old-school jeans!” I cooed into my webcam as I struggled to keep both pants legs together. Oh, the joys of second-hand shopping.
Reality hit about halfway through filming when I decided to stretch out. Underarm sweat stains and all, this sweater was ITCHY. Like, unpleasantly to the touch itchy.
Between tightening my pants and uncomfortably adjusting my sweater I looked in the mirror and knew I had failed this aesthetic right out the gate. Failure 2.0: check. Girl 3: Zoe Chang It was at this point I accepted my full-length hoop skirt and abs-pit bikini top wasn’t happening.
Time to get strategic. Zoe Chang was a hyper-femme, faintly Y2K inspired gem whose videos consisted mainly of chunky jewelry, slip dresses, and…lots of arm garters. Putting together the pieces of her highly-curated videos was easy—the resurgence of early Aughts style has been sloppily shoved into second-hand shops everywhere for years.
One look at any local Cashmereaire and you’d find a slip dress begging to be reclaimed by the same millennials who made it trendy in the first place. Mission thrift: accomplished. Urban Jungle was my oasis.
Wedged between Absolute Vintage—which mainly sells “boutique thrift store” clothes that say, “vintage” across the front at twice the price of Urban Jungle’s wares—and Citizen Jane—which had that boutique thrift store vibe but only sold modern clothes at four times the price—I found my milk and honey: -a genuine Y2K circa early 2000 slip dress in pastel baby blue -and not one but TWO cute fittedtees to layer under! Victory! Instagram-model blush lips and all, everything about this dress was adorable.
Zoe would’ve BEEN proud. Or so I thought… Like many lessons life has taught me prior: things are never what they seem. Or, in this case, how they look in your bathroom lighting.
About three hours into wearing my Gibson’s Family clotheshorse of a dress out I discovered a paramount rule of thrifting: Always, check ALL your clothing pieces in natural lighting. Sure, my slip dress may have appeared to be opaque in the fortress of solitude otherwise known as my bathroom. But OUTSIDE?
Friend, it was see-through. Barely-there slips were never my style. Target #3: A resounding success.
In clothes shopping AND life. Girls 4 & 5: Jackie Snow & Anna Sizer By the time I got to Jackie Snow—the streetwear babe famous for her intentionally oversized vintage band shirts—and Anna Sizer, the architectural white linen queen, I had entered full production mode.
I was no longer trying to match each Instagram-babe du jour step-for-step, rather, channeling the essence of their elevated wardrobes.
For Snow, I found an authentic vintage Sonic Youth shirt circa early 2000s that was musty enough to require extra TikTok filter yet distressed just enough to look “authentically worn.” As for Sizer, I dug through the men’s section until I found a white button-up that I could drape just-so to emulate her Loveless-inspired blouse from her recent get ready with me. TLDR I eventually got good at this. Would I recommend my thrifting GRWM challenge to all?
Hell no. Going through bin after bin of What The Actual F*ck clothing takes plenty of time, patience, and good light. But do I regret doing it?
No way. Not when there are entire worlds of outfit possibilities hidden beneath mismatched socks and outdated velour tracksuits just WAITING to be discovered. TL;DR of TL;DR I now own a genuine Sonic Youth shirt that smells like grandpa’s attic and my cat thinks he’s died and gone to heaven.
Moral of the story: Thrift shopping isn’t always going to be glamorous, folks—but sometimes? It hits the spot.
