we only work when we need the money

I still wear lots of thrift-store clothes. When I was growing up my family was solidly and comfortably middle-class, but my mom had grown up poor so her pennywise habits included thrift stores. As a young kid I thought nothing of it, as a pre-teen I was mortified, and as a high schooler I embraced it as the Source of All Good Fashion.

Since college, I've finally moved back into buying most of my clothing new, but I still have a lot of gems that I trot out on occasion. The thing about thrifted clothes is that many of them are made out of fabrics that just don't exist anymore. Patterns, colors, materials--maybe they're threaded with asbestos, I dunno, but they're long long gone from modern store shelves.

Here is one of my favorite suit coats, a favorite partly because it is an ungodly shade of blue, partly because it fits me well. I'm a small dude. My 34" chest will not win me any superhero awards, nor will it allow me to walk into a suit store and walk out with a coat that fits (the smallest they usually have is a 36). So I found this one and was thrilled at how well it fit. I love it so much I've re-sown the lining on multiple occasions. On one of these occasions I discovered the awesome tag inside:

In case you can't read it, it says, "The Future Executive Youth of America." Yep. That's awesome on too many levels to count, not to mention that it's a boys jacket, hence the snug fit. But this label also speaks to other long-gone trends of fashion: the awkwardly descriptive label. "Perma-prest" shirts and the like. Here's another beauty, a thin tie from long ago that is once again so hip all the kids gawk when I wear it:

Note to marketers: if you call something "Hi-Brow", most likely it ain't. Unless it's trying to be ironic, but that's a more modern phenomenon.

I suppose that thrift clothing stores will always exist and I'm hoping I can take my own kids through all of my stages of hate/love/acceptance as they grow up.