San Francisco is My Home

26
Nov

The Fashion Exchange

Author: kris, Category: Shopping

I recently decided I need to dress like Natalie Portman in Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (wow, do you ever not care about this, but stay with me). Unfortunately, all the stores are filled with clothes for Natalie Portman in The Darjeeling Limited, so I had to hit the thrift stores, which are all I can really afford anyway.

So it was that last week saw me sniffing around The Fashion Exchange, currently my favorite used store because it’s near my house. Also because, unlike the really grotty and exciting thrift stores like Goodwill, The Fashion Exchange only accepts higher-quality clothes, so I don’t spend an hour sorting through soup-smelling flannel dresses before I find something useful.

(I have just outed myself as a thrift-store-come-lately, I know. True afficionados relish the soup scent, and some even brew batches of soupy perfume to maintain that faint chicken noodle scent all the time.*)

Because it’s on the edge of the Castro, The F.E. has a hefty guy wardrobe, but naturally I gravitated towards the skirts and stuff. Here is what I like about the girl side of the store: many things are shiny, there is a decent selection of colorful clothes in addition to the standard boring blacks, browns and taupes, and lots of stuff comes in normal sizes instead of grandmother-huge or little-sister-wee.

Of course the prices are not rock-bottom like a good thrift, but there is more than enough affordable stuff that you can browse right by the more expensive labels. Unless you like that kind of thing, but then what are you doing here?

*That is a lie. Or, I don’t know, maybe they do.