Elle’s fashion features director used to hide her little secret. But the pandemic changed that.
The plain black wicker bag between my knees bore no designer label, just a “Made in British Hong Kong” tag that dated it to the last millennium. Extravagantly sturdy, it had the air of what magazines might call an investment piece. When the friend sitting next to me at a New York Fashion Week event inquired about its provenance, I decided, for once, not to lie.When I was a fledgling fashion editor, living broke in New York, the dump was my secret. Or at least, it was a secret in New York.
When some have so little and others are drowning in a surfeit of options, the flaunting of abundance starts to feel like bad manners. When I began thrifting and scrounging my way to some semblance of personal style, there was still something shameful about admitting that your clothes had a past, unknowable-to-you life. I’ve spent a decade and a half covering fashion , and over that time I’ve seen the industry awakening to sustainability and reuse. Luxury brands that once destroyed and even burnt unsold merchandise are now thinking of ways to reinvent it.
COVID-19 taught its lessons about mutual aid, but of course it also challenged every community that tried to live by them, and it’s not yet clear what any of us are taking away from the last two years.