New fashion is old fashion (Re-posted from school blog)

This is a post I actually wrote for my online class back in April- we had to write on fashion or sports. Needless to say I chose fashion...

Spring is a new season, and with it comes new fashions, but recently the new fashions are old fashions: vintage, second-hand and thrift-store finds are the way to go this season.

Cassie Cowie, 19, created and runs her own online consignment store, MYEXCLOSET, in three different cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
"Fashion is always coming and going, and what better way to bring trends and styles back with vintage and second-hand. It is a very authentic way of doing it, instead of buying a new version of the trend re-vamped," Cowie wrote in an email.

Luckily, Toronto has a great collection of thrift stores. Plus, there is the Toronto section of Preloved, a company that creates new high-end fashion pieces out of old clothes.

Tess Roby is a 16-year old student at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. She mostly shops at Value Village because it's cheap, but she likes to buy new clothes every season from stores like H&M, which she says is very good.
But Roby thinks that a lot of stores, like Urban Outfitters for example, "pull their ideas from vintage shoppers" and use them to create more expensive fashions.

"I definitely like that [thrift] one-of-a-kind," Roby says. "Sometimes there can be stories behind clothes." A friend of hers once bought a dress from 69 Vintage that was a traditional hand-made Dutch dress.

Isabel B. Slone also has a lot of thrift clothing. She writes Hipster Musings, which gets 5,000 to 6,000 visitors a week. She picks thrift clothes from the 80s and 90s that are "cheap, outrageous and tacky, which kind of suits my personality," she says.
"Designers are always looking through their archives for present inspiration from the past," Slone says about thrift fashions effecting new fashions. "Everything in fashion seems to get recycled eventually."

*Photo Credits: Alexandra Auger and Isabel B. Slone

Shopping Spree at the VV

I love Value Village!

• -It's CHEAP! Affordability is a huge plus-- It's good for students on a tight budget or thrifty-shoppers.
• It's environmentally friendly-- It's exactly like buying new things, minus the gas it took to ship it to Canada from China or India or Turkey.
• It recycles! It gets rid of other people's old clothes, instead of sending them to the dump to rot.
• The stock changes all the time. This means you always have new choices.
• They help the community -- The store creates jobs. The clothes are affordable for those who don't have cash to burn. Money and clothes are donated to local non-profit groups, and many of the clothes are sent to developing countries

There are tonnes of second-hand stores all over Toronto so you don't necessarily have to go to a Value Village.

BUT I've found, by chance, a few really great big-name items at VV. (They're a little more expensive compared to other items at the VV, but they're obviously a deal.)
FCUK wide-leg jeans for $10.
Tommy Hilfiger navy wool blazer for $19.
Gap lilac wool wrap-sweater for $15.

VV is a good place to get essentials and basics, and if you happen to find a really nice brand-name piece, scoop it up.
Otherwise, to find those big-name pieces, check out MYEXCLOSET.

Please Note: I had previously wrote that Walmart owns Value Village. This is in fact a rumour and I took that line out of the post.

Saving the Environment, One Ex at a Time

Want to save money, be trendy and help the environment? Buy some Exes.

MYEXCLOSET is the place to get used designer clothing. This site sells used and vintage clothing (some big brand names and some not, but all hip and in good condition). Every piece is hand-picked by the staff, so there is a good selection of fashionable, unique pieces.

A former school mate of mine, Cassie Cowie, thought up this brilliant idea last summer. With the help of her friend, Hayley Dineen, the site was up and running in a matter on months.
The site operates in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, but anyone in Canada can buy from the site. If you're living in one of those cities, contact your city's Closet Manager to get rid of some Exes. Contact information is online.

What's on my Ex wish list?

• Red Vintage Linen Skirt
• Black Sequined Dress
• Diane Von Furstenburg Tank

Also check out Fashion Television's article and Slice.ca's articles about MYEXCLOSET.