Thrift is circling the drain. I’ve been beating that dead horse drum for a few years now, and I see no signs of things changing for the better. For the worse, yet – incrementally, with every passing year. It is the chickens of fast fashion (and fast everything) coming home to roost. In droves. The thrift stores are as full of stuff as ever. It’s just the stuff there now isn’t the kind of stuff that used to be there 5-10 years ago. The OGs know. To newer thrift shoppers, it might seem like business as usual, especially because the quality of stuff in thrift stores isn’t all that different from what they might be used to from shopping retail. But the OGs? We know.

Since COVID, vintage has been my refuge as a thrifter who remembers the Good Old Days. I remember that when I originally started thrifting, back in the 90s, “vintage” meant stuff from the 60s and 70s, or earlier. As a teenager who longed to shop at the GAP (back when the GAP was bomb), vintage didn’t really interest me. It didn’t represent the aesthetic I was after. That idea of “vintage” stuck with me for decades, to my ultimate detriment. Even into the 2010s, I turned up my nose at “vintage” because, much as with 60s and 70s fashion, I had a very narrow and stereotypical image of 80s and 90s fashion in my mind that didn’t align with my then-style. I couldn’t see past the label to realize that every era has a broad array of trends, and that trends are cyclical. And I was also spoiled. The 2010s were a decade of thrift excess – there were racks full of current designer pieces just waiting to be picked over. Why bother learning to spot good vintage when you’ve got Burberry and YSL and Rick Owens?

Well, you know what happened.

The designer tap ran dry, replaced by a torrent of Shein and similar crap. I was forced to look closer at pieces without fancy labels and discovered the goldmine that is vintage. Not a literal goldmine. A mine of quality and true value. Pieces made from good materials, built to last – if not a lifetime, definitely more than a dozen wash cycles. And when I say “good materials”, I mean it. The fabrics really were different pre-2005. For one thing, natural fibers – cotton, wool, silk – were more prevalent. And I am talking about 100% cotton, wool, and silk versus the synthetic blends that even high-end designers these days try to pass as “wool” and “silk”. For another thing, those fibers were actually better. Take cotton. For a long time, I thought I was imagining this: that 90s cotton had a totally different feel and weight than current day (100%) cotton. Then I learned that I wasn’t hallucinating. Everything about vintage cotton is different, from the type of fibers that were used, to the way they were grown and processed. And this was true of the cotton used in, say, the 90s by mall brands like the GAP. A vintage cotton T-shirt will invariably be miles better, quality-wise, than almost any designer version produced today; it starts with the fabric, and almost nobody is growing and processing cotton the way it used to be done. Vintage cotton is a luxury.

But time marches on. It’s 2026 now, which means that, technically, anything from 2006 and earlier is now considered vintage. Wild, I know. The problem is that, as the vintage “window” continues to roll forward, we are about to hit an enormous pothole … otherwise known as the rise of fast fashion. Now, there’s an argument to be made that fast fashion started earlier, at the beginning of the 2000s, with the expansion of retailers like Forever 21, Zara, and H&M. However, fast fashion undisputably began its meteoric rise around the time and immediately after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. What that means is that, over the next few years, the category of “vintage clothing” is going to start including more and more of the late 2000s and early 2010s fast fashion. The farther away from 2000 we get, the less pre-2000 clothing will exist to be thrifted. I mean, we’re not making more of it and the existing supply is dwindling because more and more people are trying to source it (and then hang on to it).

So, consider this your warning: get out there and thrift vintage while you can.

I’m already seeing less and less of it than I was even a couple of years ago – and, believe me, it’s all I look for at the thrifts these days. It’s getting pretty disheartening. Every so often, though, I will find a special piece that makes me a believer all over again. Let me show you.

Last week, I found this incredible 80s Laurel wool plaid skirt:

How do I know it’s from the 80s? Well, the biggest clue was the tag:

Made on West Germany: pretty self-explanatory, right? LOL.

I’ve been in the vintage game for a long time now, so I happen to know that Laurel is a good brand. (It was a diffusion brand launched by Escada in the early 80s.) But even if you’d never heard of it before, there are obvious signs that this skirt is fantastic quality. I mean, like, luxury designer quality. (And, yeah, this is a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier. An “accessibly-priced” line sold in the 80s can probably out-compete the current-day pieces made by its parent designer brand today.)

Let’s start with materials. The main part of the skirt is wool.

Thick, swishy, still in perfect condition 40 years later. Ditto the leather waistband. Yes, it’s real leather. Except for some minor rubbing on the inside of the buckle, it looks great. And feels very soft and supple. And check out the grommets:

That’s a detail that makes this a piece to last a lifetime.

Now, let’s look at the inside of the skirt. Checking out seams and hems is one of my fave things to do. I’m not a sewer, but I appreciate quality finishing.

I’m pretty sure that hem was hand-sewn. The last time I saw something similar in a more recent piece was in a dress from Dries Van Noten (that probably retailed for thousands of dollars).

I have no idea how much this skirt would have retailed for in the 80s, but I’m pretty sure that, even adjusted for inflation, it didn’t cost $500 and up – which is a very conservative estimate of what a similar piece would go for these days. I paid $16 for it at the thrifts. That’s higher than it would have been 5 years ago (when it probably would have been under $10), but still an incredible bargain.

And the fit? Incredible. This skirt looks absolutely fire – and it’s timeless. I can’t wait to pair it with a graphic tee and some Docs and rock the hell out of it.

Have I convinced you to give vintage thrifting a try?

It snowed again this week. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I had to get that out of my system because, honestly, WTAF. It’s the middle of April and I feel like I’m stuck in a never-ending January loop. It’s hard to get excited about spring clothes when spring is missing in action. It’s hard to be excited about anything. I tried. This week, I played catch-up from being sick as a dog for over a week. My house is still half a disaster, but I’ve made some progress. I suppose that one upside of this weather is that I won’t have to worry about putting garden work on my chore list for a few more months. Sigh. *cries in Edmonton weather*

I am feeling very stressed on the writing front, and it’s all my own damn fault. My plan is to publish The Mysterious Affair at Gaunt Hall in June (to tie in with the Solstice-theme in the plot) but I’m realizing that’s only 1.5 months away and I have quite a lot of work still to do to prepare the book for pub. Meanwhile, I’m slogging through the first draft of a new book, which may or may not be my most ambitious project yet. That’s assuming I finish it, lol. I have a verrrrry extensive outline written out, but the actual writing is going sloooooowly. Maybe it’s because this is almost technically an edit/draft 2, which always take more time, and because I’m battling major writer’s doubt about the whole project.

And then there’s the 3^rd Inspector Hawthorne mystery, due late fall, that I’m trying not to forget entirely …

All that to say: don’t bite more than you can chew, kids.

I’ve done very little reading lately, apart from finishing Lucia Berlin’s short story collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women. It’s excellent, highly recommend. On the other hand, my daughter and I are making steady progress with Midsomer Murders – it’s our nightly post-dinner, craft-and-chill ritual. I scrapbook, she does diamond dot paintings. We both agree that Charlie Nelson is the cutest DS, and never got nearly enough credit from Barnaby for his brains.

I’m very excited to finally go thrifting again this weekend. Thanks to my bout of flu, I haven’t been in two weeks, which is more like two months in Thrift Time, haha! I’m really hoping I can find some magazines because my scrapbooking supplies are starting to run low. Fingers crossed!

Have a great weekend!

I have a new hobby so, of course, I have to tell you all about it. Are we even (internet) friends if you don’t have to sit and listen to my random enthusiasms? I think not.

OK, so technically this is not a new-new hobby. I have piles of old scrapbooks to prove it. I’ve also done mixed media collage before. Remember my tarot-inspired collage paintings?

And now the two have come together in a new, fun way. But let me back up a bit. It started with my writing notebook. I started keeping one last year – it’s a place to write down story ideas and characters, iterate plot outlines, track my writing progress, make writing to-do lists, etc. Because I’m still a kid with a stationery fetish at heart, I had to make my notebook look pretty: pick one with a cute cover, use coloured pens to write, add stickers. I have a low-key “vintage” sticker obsession. [That is to say, I love stickers with vintage designs, especially anything to do with flowers, butterflies, books, astrology, tarot, and magic-related symbols.] I have been collecting stickers and sticker books for years but I also suffer from that problem where you keep “saving” stuff because it’s “too pretty to use”. Know what I’m talking about? Well, I bit the bullet and started actually using my stickers and adding them to my writing notebook.

And it was fun! It reminded me of my old scrapbooks, where I’d cut out pictures from magazines and make little collages around my scribblings – random musings, poetry, you name it. I went and pulled them out of storage and had a lovely walk down memory lane. [Actually, some of my old poetry, angsty as it was, isn’t half bad.] And it fired up the old spark again. I decided I wanted to start a new project: a decorated book where I could collect bits and bobs of inspiration, like a moodboard to go alongside my writing notebook. A collection of quotes, ideas, poetry, pretty images, etc. A good friend of mine who’s into scrapbooking told me the technical term for that is a “commonplace book”. So that’s what I set out to do.

I found a nice, big notebook – technically a drawing notebook (from the dollar store) because I wanted thicker paper so my pens (Sharpie ultra fine markers) wouldn’t bleed through too much – and got my other supplies together: sticker books, leftover magazine cutouts (from my collage days), tape. Yes, regular old tape. Try not to be too horrified. But my idea was to create something pretty lo-fi at first, so the “taped together” look was intentional. [Mostly; it was also just convenient and I’m lazy.]

As with all creative projects, it began to evolve – quickly. I started getting more adventurous with my compilations and slowly moved towards a more visuals-heavy, collage-based approach.

I eventually did some basic Googling and discovered tape runner, which was a gamechanger. Basically, imagine glue and whiteout correction tape having a baby – that’s a tape runner.  It’s so easy to use and perfect for paper-based collages. I started with the name brand stuff (Scotch), then moved to the no-name version because … well, I was going through a lot of the stuff quickly. It was a collage extravaganza!

Creating these is basically the perfect relaxation activity – especially if I throw on a fave mystery show in the background for company. It has done the most to help me cut back on my phone screen time in the evenings; being tired and looking to decompress is when I’m most vulnerable to the siren call of doomscrolling, and this is a fantastic replacement for that. It requires very little dexterity or skill, so it’s pure creative expression. Every step of the process is fun, from going through old magazines and tearing out interesting images and useful scraps, to assembling a new collage. When I started, I was really focused on “statement” images, the ones that can serve as the focal point of a collage. But the more I experimented, moving towards “full page” collages, the more I realized that the “background” bits are equally important. And it became a fun challenge to develop an eye for useful scraps that can be layered to create interesting tableaux. It’s all about colours, textures, patterns, juxtaposition.

The hardest part is sourcing magazines, which are my preferred media for creating collages. I have a fairly large collection of fashion magazines at home, which I have been judiciously pruning for many years now. Some, I don’t want to touch because they’re special editions or very old; many have already been pruned as much as I’m willing to go, because I don’t want to destroy them altogether. I used to find a lot of magazines at the thrifts, but that is no longer the case – especially for fashion ones like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar (my faves, because they have the best editorial photos shoots with interesting set-ups and themes). I’ve looked into other options, like FB Marketplace; years ago, I lucked into buying someone’s massive collection of hundreds of old magazines for, like, a hundred bucks. Sadly, I haven’t found a deal like that again. A lot of sellers seem to be asking $5 per issue and up. In contrast, Value Village is a relative bargain at about $2 per issue. I also recently realized that non-fashion magazines, like National Geographic, can be good sources for “background” scraps – landscape photos often have very interesting colours and patterns. Those at least are easier to find.

Here’s a collage in progress:

And the final result:

If you want to try your hand, this is one of the easiest and cheapest creative hobbies to start. You need minimal supplies, some of which you probably already have; the rest can be acquired fairly inexpensively. A notebook (mine is 8 x 11 in, but you can start with a smaller one), a good pair of scissors, paper scraps and ephemera, tape runner (or tape or glue), and pens (optional). For the paper scraps and ephemera (a fancy word for odds and ends), you can scavenge around the house first; lots of things can be useful, from old wrapping paper to pretty labels to greeting cards to magazines, etc.

The thrift stores are also great places to source your stock, of course. In addition to magazines, I now also look for old, damaged books – especially vintage books (yellowed paper and interesting fonts) and art books. The idea of tearing up books makes me physically ill, but if they are already damaged (severe water marks, torn up covers, etc.), it’s easier to think of the process as giving old paper new life.