Owning my own fashion store has really opened my eyes to the economic impact of fashion. Although I'm far from perfect, I really do try and make an effort with damage control on the environment. This is one of the many reasons I shop primarily vintage over highstreet brands.
I have always shopped in vintage stores but in my mid twenties I went through a bit of a style crisis where I wasn't sure if I was 'too old' for vintage and needed to start shopping in more sophisticated shops like COS or & other stories. This was obviously ridiculous - there is no such thing as being too old for vintage, you just have to know what to look for.
The world of vintage is vast and it can be a bit daunting delving into it if your used to a one stop ASOS shop for all your fashion needs. Therfore I've decided to give you some tips that I wish I had read before embarking on my vintage quests.
Here are my 5 top tips for vintage shopping.
1. Get inspiration! Be it bloggers, designer brands or a good old fashioned flick through Vogue, having an idea what you you're looking for is going to make your job 50 times easier.
2. Once know what you're looking for, try and get the keyword as accurate as you can; use the colour, size, gender and style in your search. Sometimes specific styles have fancy names that will make your search easier if you know them. I would also include the word 'vintage' to filter out any generic bulk sellers.
4. Try as many platforms as possible. I usually start with google - then in this order - Ebay, Etsy, Depop, Asos-Marketplace, Beyond Retro. I try to avoid high end online vintage stores that sell designer brands as quite frankly there's nothing under £100 and that's already over my budget but if you wanted to you could try Vestiaire Collective.
4. Once you've found your dream item, don't wait around! This is vintage, there's literally only ONE of them you need to snap it up asaps. You can try and message the buyer and put an offer in 10-20% cheaper than the asking price but to be honest if I really love an item I just buy it before someone else notices it's charm!
5. Don't give up! If you can't find what you're looking for keep trying, new items are added all the time, sometimes I haven't found the perfect item until the 3rd or 4th time of looking.
As much as it may seem like a bit of a faff and potentially more time consuming than high street shopping, I promise you it's worth it for the bargains and unique statement pieces.
Here are some pieces I've bought in the last few months...
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