Successful Secondhand Shopping

Have you ever gone thrifting in hopes to find some new pieces for your closet but walked away feeling out of luck and empty handed? Let’s face it - while shopping secondhand and embracing sustainability (topics we’ve discussed in length in previous blogs) is really important right now, finding the right pieces can sometimes feel overwhelming or even hopeless. How do you find clothing that fits you properly and makes you feel good?

The way we see it, there are four crucial things you can do to set yourself up for success at a secondhand store – determining your proper sizes, understanding the best way to try on clothes, selecting great pieces based on fabrics, and learning how to care for your secondhand clothes. Let’s dive in!

PROPER SIZING

On any given day at a store like ours, there are easily pieces from five different decades, if not a few more. And every single one of those decades represents different styles, and more importantly sizes! So how do you find pieces that will fit you just right?

Sizing starts at home by becoming more familiar with your body and your closet, and making sure you know your proper measurements is so important. Use a flexible tape measure for shoulders, bust, waist, hips, and inseam. Having these raw measurements will assist you later if you are buying online and/or unable to try items on. If you own a basic dress, top, skirt, or pair of pants that you love to wear, just try them on at home! Notice how they fit and where they hit your body.

You should also take the measurements of these garments so you know what kind of rise, inseam, and sleeve length you prefer. While I absolutely encourage trying styles that are out of your comfort zone, knowing what you like and why will help inform your selection process.

If you take the tape measure with you while shopping, you can measure garments before taking them into the fitting room to see how they match up with your measurements. The measurements on the garment should be about a half inch bigger than your body measurements for them to fit comfortably.

You also need to remember to account for stretch, so pulling an item taut while you measure will give you an idea of how much they can stretch to accommodate your body.

A trick with pants that works for some people is to see if both sides of the waist can reach comfortably around your neck, and if so, those pants should fit your waist. I’ve found that this trick works best for higher rise pants or masculine cut pants, but for those of us with wider hips than the sizing standard based on our waist measurement, it may not work.

Instead, remember those great basics you already own? Wear those when you shop, and you can hold up a garment to yourself that you’re interested in trying on. If the seams roughly match up to those on the outfit you’re wearing, you’ll probably be more successful in the fitting room.

SUCCESS IN THE FITTING ROOM

Once you’re in the fitting room, you’ve got another opportunity to shop sustainably by making sure you don’t damage any items. While most of us don’t set out to intentionally mishandle garments, some common fitting room behaviors will certainly end the life cycle of an item - often a piece that’s made it through multiple decades and owners just to meet its demise in an easily preventable scenario. 

First off, make sure that you are completely unbuttoning and unzipping garments and then putting them on the way they are intended. Cutting corners in order to try on quickly (we get it, you’ve often been waiting a while for a fitting room) can be disastrous for a garment.  Next, you need to make sure that you’re not trying to force a garment onto your body. Obviously you’ve got to try on a variety of sizes when shopping secondhand since different brands size differently and the way that previous owners handled their clothing affects how a garment shrinks or stretches out.

This means you’ve really got to pay attention to what’s happening with your body when you’re trying something on - especially if the item doesn’t have any stretch to it.  If an item won’t easily pull up past your hips, over both shoulders, or across your chest/bust, STOP TRYING IT ON.

Some of the most common forms of damage that we see daily are buttons popping off, small tears, and broken zippers.

All of this can be avoided by making informed decisions about your behavior in the fitting room and being honest and understanding with yourself. At Strawberry Mountain we always try to mend anything that we can, but the fact of the matter is that we’re not all seamstresses, and for small businesses like ours we frankly don’t have the manpower to spend precious time fixing every garment that is damaged by a customer. The items we can’t fix get donated, but once they’re out of our hands, there is no guarantee that they won’t end up in a landfill, and that’s just not what any of us want.

SELECTING GREAT PIECES

Selection requires an openness to learning more about textiles, and you can once again start in your own closet. Looking at the content tag and then touching your clothing will help you get a sense of how different fibers feel, and which ones you prefer. Not everyone is super particular about the way the material feels when it is on their body, but for those of us who are sensory reactive, having a familiarity with the textiles we like versus those we don’t will save us from trying on, for example, ten polyester blend pieces that we will hate, no matter how they fit. 

Very generally speaking, natural fibers like cotton, silk, and linen have a higher original price point than synthetics like nylon, acrylic, and polyester. If you know how these textiles all feel, you’ll be able to touch the garment and assess whether it warrants a closer inspection. 

CARING FOR YOUR SECONDHAND CLOTHES

We want your secondhand clothes to last you as long as possible, and that requires understanding how to properly care for them. While shopping secondhand is more sustainable than shopping for new clothing, it’s important to recognize that synthetic fabrics will not biodegrade in our lifetime. Every molecule of every 70s polyester disco shirt ever manufactured is still in existence. Every time we wash a piece of clothing, we shed microfibers into our waterways. Natural fibers will eventually biodegrade. Synthetic fibers will not and create a pollutant called microplastics. 

Who hasn’t accidentally mixed a delicate dry clean only garment into their regular white clothes load, only to find that precious piece torn asunder while matching their socks? Modern laundry cycles can be hell on clothing, but that doesn’t mean we expect you to not wash your clothes - we just encourage you to do it smartly! If you are someone who likes to wash your clothing after every wear, you can purchase laundry bags to wash your clothes in, or filters that attach to your machine that catch microplastics. If you choose to wash your clothing in laundry bags, this helps prevent pilling (those tiny little balls of fuzz that end up on sweaters and other garments) and will extend the life of your garment. 

or those of us with a more laissez-faire approach to laundry, spot treating items as needed minimizes microfiber shed and helps maintain the original shape of the garment.

A good guideline is to follow the care instructions on the tag of the garment; dry clean only isn’t just a suggestion.

Although regular trips to the dry cleaner can quickly add up, getting a few wears in first and then choosing a dry cleaner with green services is both good for the environment and good for your wallet when you don’t have to purchase new clothing to replace ruined items. This also leaves your clothing in good condition until you’re finished with it, so you can either donate it or sell to a secondhand shop like Strawberry Mountain, keeping your clothing out of a landfill and putting it back where it belongs - into someone else’s wardrobe.

I hope these tips and tricks are encouraging and bring you success at secondhand stores! Feeling defeated on a shopping trip because you can’t find pieces that fit, or because you’re forced to replace things that have been damaged or worn out is never fun – and shopping should always be fun. Plus, if we’re trying to make a difference in our own lives and for our planet, we need to do more than “the least you can do” and that requires educating yourself. Educating yourself about yourself, about your body, and about your clothing preferences will set you up for success. Thanks for reading!

Until next time,
“Be excellent to each other”
- Danielle