"This winter, I was in the market for a very particular vintage shirt: a Grateful Dead concert tee featuring bedazzled sheet music for "Sugar Magnolia." My mom had bought one at a show in the '80s, and over the intervening decades, my sister and I wore it until the seams literally gave out. (It's still in my closet, but the rips in it are so large that it's impossible to tell which are holes for your extremities and which are just... holes.)"
"Suddenly I found myself hooked on resale - scooping up a pair of 1970s poodle-shaped lamps on eBay; buying seriously underpriced Stuart Weitzman satin pumps - in search of not just deals but a sense of superiority. In our TikTok shop-ified, two-days-to-your-doorstep fashion landscape, shopping has never been more seamless. Like a stranger's button-up? Snag a pic, reverse Google image search it... and voila! It's yours."
"Desperate for a bridesmaid dress out of your price range? Rent it on sites Pickle and Armoire, or use AfterPay to purchase it in installments. As such, having a sizable, expensive, and of-the-moment wardrobe is no longer the flex it used to be. The only thing that can truly earn you bragging points is a good, one-of-a-kind score. "It's so coveted because of the algorithmic blandness and emptiness [we're experiencing]," says Substack fashion writer Viv Chen."
A buyer tracked down a specific vintage Grateful Dead tee through an Instagram archival seller and received it from a collector in Virginia, reigniting interest in resale. Collecting led to purchases of 1970s lamps and underpriced designer shoes, motivated by both deals and a sense of superiority. Modern conveniences like TikTok, image search, rental platforms, and installment services have made mainstream shopping seamless and ubiquitous. As a result, bragging rights now accrue to one-of-a-kind, hard-to-find items. A surge of secondhand curators and paywalled newsletters offers sourcing tips, promo codes, and access to rare finds.
Read at Bustle
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