The Intentional Thrifter: An Autumn Story in July

(A story in the style of The Vivienne Files)

She finds it hard to pin down her favourite colour.  Sometimes it's blue. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's rose pink, plum, or even magenta.

But at least she knows that all those colours go pretty well with grey. Also navy, but she's putting her fall efforts into grey. So she pulls out last year's clothes, and uses what she's learned from The Vivienne Files to put a basic group of neutral things together.

Grey t-shirt, off-white shirt, jean-style Tencel shirt; blue jeans, grey pinstriped jeans, grey denim skirt

Short-sleeved grey sweater, off-white t-shirt, grey t-shirt dress, striped t-shirt, grey cords, grey fleece cardigan

Revolve dress from Encircled.ca

It seems she has enough to cover her back, but that there are some extra things that could help these clothes out. A pair of grey pants that aren't jeans or cords; a plain-ish, grey sweater that isn't a t-shirt. And maybe a pullover in a different colour.

She starts browsing a bit online, but can't seem to find the right things, right size, right price. A lot of things are out of stock. She does wonder, somewhat grumpily, why she's bothering. Her lifestyle was already pretty casual, but with all that's going on this year, her reasons to dress up now are pretty much zilch. Her clothes budget is also small, because she's decided to put some money into a good pair of shoes.

But one hot afternoon she puts on the accoutrements one currently needs to go shopping, and drops into a thrift store. Unfortunately, these days she can't try anything on, so it's all about estimating what will fit. The best thing about this store is that the prices are pretty low, so if she makes a mistake it's not a huge deal.

First, the pants rack. Narrowing it down by size, then colour and style, leaves only a couple of maybes. She goes with a dark grey pair that are a size up from her normal, but it's a forgiving sort of style, so she crosses her fingers and puts them in the cart.

Now to hunt for grey sweaters. She finds one she likes, with all its tags missing, including the fabric label; her best guess is that it's mostly cotton. It looks like it would work well with the pants.

Hey, what's that? An Ann Taylor Loft cardigan, and it definitely looks like it would fit.  Too good to pass up.

There's a pullover sweater in a bluish teal that will go with a scarf she recently acquired. It will be a good replacement for a red one she had that was a similar style, but that was shedding little balls of fur everywhere.

She's also been thinking about blouses, so she has a quick look along the long-sleeved-tops rack. This catches her eye: a cowl-neck cotton tunic in magenta, with sort of a pattern in the fabric that you miss at first glance. It's something that could be dressed up or down. Size Large, but it could still work.

Her thrifting instincts say "That's enough." She buys the five items for about the same price as one blouse she had looked at online. And she is very pleased.

Coming soon: Adding colour and making outfits.