I’ve fallen into a pleasant Netflix routine since coming back from Mexico; every evening, after the kids are in bed and I’m ready to tuck in as well, I watch an episode (or two, if I’m feeling indulgent) of Elementary. Because of its format as a prime-time weekly serial, there is a certain amount of soothing formularity to each episode; most of the time, there isn’t a lot of overt violence, though plenty is implied – this being a crime show and all. This makes Elementary easy to digest, especially if you are as fond of murder mysteries as I am. [The serial killer episodes are my least favourite; hard to believe given that I used to watch Criminal Minds religiously when I was younger.] What keeps me coming back, though, are the characters and the way in which the show has tweaked the Sherlockian canon. I wasn’t expecting much from a CBS show, but after the first two seasons (which is as far as I’ve gotten for now) it’s proving itself to be surprisingly progressive. It’s not perfect … but it’s a good deal better than you might think. An informal poll on my Insta Stories had Elementary greatly lagging behind Sherlock in popularity, which I found interesting. I haven’t watched the latter – I’ve never been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, to be honest – but based on comments I’ve heard from people who have (including those who are fans of the BBC show), I think that Elementary does some things better. Controversial opinion? Let me explain. And stay with me, because there is a connection to personal style at the end of this post, I promise.

Here’s what I love about Elementary, in no particular order:

Joan Watson. I know that some people can’t get enough of the Holmes-Watson dynamic in Sherlock, but I think that the choice to make Watson a woman in Elementary was brilliant. Joan is a great foil to Sherlock (more on that later), but more importantly she is a fantastic character in her own right and not merely a side-kick. How many brilliant, competent, independent, strong female characters are there on TV? How many of them are minorities? How many of them don’t have storylines that revolve primarily around their search for love and/or their family life?   

The Watson-Holmes relationship. There are so, so few truly platonic relationships between men and women depicted on screen. Holmes and Watson respect and care for each other, but never once has the show hinted at underlying sexual tension. I think that Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller have great chemistry, and they’re both very attractive, but I have no desire to see them (pretend to) bang – in large part because the show has carefully avoided baiting that particular “ship”. I think that’s harder than it sounds; think of the X Files, for example. I also really enjoy the dynamic between Watson and Holmes. Holmes might be a better detective at the beginning, but Watson is no slouch, and she regularly knows things that Holmes doesn’t. She also calls him out on his BS all the time, which actually helps to make Holmes less insufferable. I’m not a fan of the “misanthropic male genius who is so brilliant that everyone has to fall over themselves making excuses for his sh*tty behavior” trope.

Irene Adler/Moriarty. Have I mentioned how much I love that Elementary has made both of the most important people in Holmes’ life women? The Adler/Moriarty twist in season 1 was brilliantly executed, and I genuinely enjoyed Irene/Jamie’s character. It helps that she’s played by Natalie Dormer who, while possibly a little young for the part, does the evil genius thing with such gusto. It’s a more stereotypical role than Joan Watson, and I think the show is a bit heavy-handed with the whole “her only weakness are her feels for Holmes” business, but that’s a minor quibble in the scheme of things.    

Captain Gregson, Det. Marcus Bell, and the Irregulars. Both of the former are smarter than your average “TV cop who is not the main character”, which I appreciate. [Worth mentioning that Jon Michael Hill is QUITE easy on the eyes. And I’m old enough to remember that Aidan Quinn was a stone cold fox back in the day.] Also, as the show has gone on, I have enjoyed the callbacks to various of Sherlock’s Irregulars – it’s a nicely constructed little universe for the most part (not a huge fan of Mycroft’s story arc or general presence on the show).

I haven’t said much about Holmes himself, which is not to say that he’s the weak link of the show. Jonny Lee Miller (whose work I have not watched, apart from Trainspotting and some Austen adaptations – more on that soon) is very good and, in my wholly subjective opinion, more attractive than Cumberbatch – to the extent that matters for a character like this. Don’t @ me. That being said, I don’t know if Miller is simply playing to type here or not, and I can imagine a few other actors doing interesting takes on this role. In a way, I think the fact that his performance doesn’t dominate the entire show is a good thing. Also, what I appreciate about the way this Sherlock is written is that he is mostly plausible as an actual human being of the 21st century.

Anyway, I promised some style-related content and here it is.  

I don’t typically pay a lot of attention to the costuming on the TV shows that I watch. I know that might seem strange given, well, everything you know about me through this blog. Elementary made me realize that I’m not very observant when it comes to inanimate things; my attention is always wrapped up in analyzing people’s verbal and non-verbal cues, and my own internal reactions (hello, Type 4 Wing 3!). But Elementary is also an exception in that I actually started paying attention to what the characters wear. I think their costume department does a fantastic job of maintaining a cohesive, well-defined aesthetic for each of the main characters, which is probably why it caught my eye. More than that, the aesthetics spoke to me on a personal level. To wit:

Joan is a boho chic goddess. She wears a lot of layers, loose, drapey pieces, abstract prints. She favours short dresses and skirts almost exclusively (often paired with ankle boots, but always heels of some kind), and does interesting things with proportions. While the overall aesthetic doesn’t perfectly align with mine, there is overlap with the Artist and the Bohemian. Seeing her outfits has inspired me to try some new formulas within each of those style personas.

Sherlock is professor chic all the way. Button up shirts, vests, skinny pants, and jackets. So many jackets. But the vibe is shabby chic, not sharp suiting. This is right up my Adventurer style alley. I am gonna start buttoning my shirts all the way, and am seriously considering trying to incorporate a tie into one of my outfits.

Moriarty is evil mastermind chic, obvi. Everything is sharply tailored and badass. I mean, just look:

This speaks to my Prince persona, especially the darker, Machiavellian side of it (and, no, the name of this avatar is not a coincidence). The Prince side of my style spectrum is where I go when I want to feel powerful, and this is one hell of a power outfit.

Have you watched Elementary? Let’s talk in the comments.

It’s officially spring! I’m firmly in camp “Summer is Best”, but I’ve got a new-found fondness for spring this year. After the frigid temps of February and early March, the Big Melt feels positively tropical. Also, as my style continues to embrace layering, spring is suddenly looking full of possibilities; I’m excited to bust out some of my transitional pieces (cough, leather jackets, cough). March usually feels like one of the longer months of the year – probably because it immediately follows February – but this time it was a blur of activity so it felt quite truncated and short. Between our trip to Mexico, Spring Break, social commitments and, oh yeah, work, there was little time for yours truly to hibernate. Being a social butterfly is not my comfort zone, but I suppose a little change of pace every now and then is good for one’s growth.

On to the clothes:

These were the outfits I pre-planned for March based on my “florals for spring” theme. Full disclosure: I didn’t end up wearing all of them to work because life (and a few extra working-from-home days) happened. It was a solid line-up, nonetheless. The interesting discovery I made part-way through the month was that, as much as I still love florals, I don’t want to be wearing them every day. There were times when I absolutely longed for one of my “corporate noir” outfits. [I’m trying out a new style descriptor. What do we think?] Overall, having the monthly theme in place was helpful to the outfit-planning process, but made the outfit-wearing somewhat less fun. To compensate, I’m not planning any theme for April, except “wear new pieces you’ve been saving up”. I’ve been a busy little thrifter, what can I say?

As I mentioned in a previous post, a couple of weeks ago, my best friend and I took part in a local clothing resale pop-up market. We have dabbled a bit in thrift reselling in the past, though on this occasion, our merch was primarily our own closet cast-offs. As dedicated thrifters, we get a fair amount of regular closet turnover; we are constantly experimenting with different pieces, upgrading our wardrobes, and culling what doesn’t work. Direct resale is one way to recoup (some of) our costs, as well as extend the lifecyle of the clothing itself; other ways to do that include consignment, donation, and clothing swaps.

The experience of taking part in the pop-up market was an interesting and enlightening one for us – in addition to being a fun (if somewhat exhausting) opportunity to spend time together, and to connect with others. My best friend has a lot of retail experience, but this was my first time selling stuff outside of platforms like Kijiji, Instagram and the like. I’m not as much of a natural at it as I thought I would be, let’s just say. Having my own little secondhand store has been something of a pipe dream of mine for years, but I’m starting to rethink that a bit; the business side of it is definitely not my jam. Personal epiphanies aside, I had a few observations/thoughts gathered over the course of this resale adventure that I wanted to share here.

Your Clothes Aren’t Worth What You Think They’re Worth

I’ve said this before, but it bears saying again: clothes are not an investment. They lose most of their value as soon as you walk them out of the store. There are exceptions and caveats to this, but even a designer item that still has its tags on isn’t worth anywhere close to the full retail value. From experience, I would say that newbie resellers tend to make one of two mistakes: 1) pricing their merch based on how much they paid for it, or 2) pricing it based on how much they like the item. Neither of those things matter to the market. The only value an item has is what someone else is willing to pay for it. And you have to understand the psychology of the parties. All things being equal, a buyer doesn’t have an existing attachment to a piece of clothing, but will place a higher relative value on the money in their pocket. In contrast, a seller will feel a greater sense of investment in the clothing, because they already paid for it (whether for themselves in the first instance, or even purely for resale). There is also an opportunity cost that you cannot ignore; sometimes making a fast sale for a little bit less money is better than sitting on unsold merch for a long time in the hope of a higher profit. Bottom line: a lot of factors play a role in pricing, and pricing is one of the keys to success as a reseller.

Know Your Market

I think I learned a lot from watching other vendors in action. The ones that seemed to have the most customer traffic tended to have merch that was, for lack of a better word, pretty generic – brands popular with Millennials, solid colours (mostly neutrals), and fairly basic pieces. In contrast, the stuff my friend and I were selling reflected our slightly more “niche” aesthetic; we had somewhat fewer people buying from us, but in many cases the ones who did, bought multiple pieces. As casual or hobby resellers, that was enough to make it worth our time at this particular event; but if we were to try to get a proper side (or main) hustle going, we would likely have to re-think our inventory. It’s all fine and good to have a core of devoted customers who appreciate a specific aesthetic, but you have to make sure that it represents a market that can sustain your business. In my case, I don’t think a business model of “buy what I, myself, like” would work in the long term; my personal aesthetic doesn’t appeal to enough people.

Reselling Is A Tough Business

Margins are pretty slim if you are investing any money at all in your inventory – even at thrift prices. (The consignment model is much better from that perspective.) You have to deal in large volumes to make a decent profit, and that can be very time- and effort-intensive. Focusing on designer items can provide higher margins (but it’s not always a given because not all designer labels have equally good resale value) but it comes with its own drawbacks: such inventory is harder to source, and makes you reliant on a smaller pool of customers (with bigger budgets). I follow a few very successful resellers on social media, so I know it can be done, but it’s clear that what they do is no cake-walk.

To illustrate my point, here’s the low-down on our pop-up market experience.

Over the course of 2 days, my friend and I cleared about $1,000 in gross sales. This is a decent amount for what amounted to a kind of garage sale on our part. But everyone knows that gross revenue is not the same thing as profit, right? After deducting our expenses (booth rental, Square card reader, snacks, and miscellaneous supplies), we were left with $835. Of that, $100 went to a friend whose dress I sold for her. So we were left with $735, or about $367 each. [For various reasons, we decided to split the net sales 50-50 rather than based on how much inventory we brought to the table.]

Now, if we stop here, the money still looks pretty good. We spent roughly 14 hours over two days at the market, so we made about $26/hour. Of course, that doesn’t account for the time that went into preparing for the sale itself (steaming all the clothes, checking for flaws, making price tags, etc.). Let’s be conservative with that estimate, and say 3 hours each. We still made $21/hour, which is better than minimum wage.

But this is still an incomplete picture (if you were to look at this as a business rather than 2 people selling their own clothes) because it doesn’t account for the original cost of the clothes themselves. Those add up to $372 (most of the items were thrifted). This would leave $363 in true profit, or $181.50 each, or $10.70/hour. Less than minimum wage.

The other thing to consider is that less than half of the items we brought with us actually sold. I mention this because, unless your track record is 100% (i.e. absolutely everything you source, sells), then there will definitely be unsold inventory for which to account as well. Some inventory takes longer to sell; some doesn’t sell, and you have to count it as a loss. This is a relevant consideration for anyone operating as a business, rather than a hobby reseller/garage seller. And there is another thing: the time professional resellers put into sourcing their inventory, which is separate and apart from the financial cost of the inventory. If I were to apply this kind of analysis to our numbers in this example … well, let’s just say, my friend and I would not look like a profitable business.

This was a good reality check for me and my pipe dreams. I think I’ll be sticking with my day job. And I don’t mean to discourage any aspiring resellers in the audience, but I think being forearmed with knowledge is key to pursuing any new venture. In fact, if I missed some things in my analysis, please add a comment below – I would love to hear your reselling insights.