Almost all my clothing is thrifted. I do it because I can engineer my shopping experience. The more I see of something, the more sated I become so I shun mall stores. Quality in fabric and construction appeals to me, though there are a surprising number of brands known for this whose garments are sorely deficient. I can do my own alterations or refashions so I see the insides of garments underneath the lining. Plenty of brands that are very costly do not bother to finish their seams and leave them to fray. Also, for preference, I would rather have interfacing that is not fused to the garment because that relates to how a garment molds to you and how it moves.
I might be happiest with unlimited funds where I could instruct my stylist to provide what I wanted but that isn't the case. I don't really like shopping - not for any body issues - I just like clothing.
I am also time poor. Plus, even with limiting my exposure to all the stimuli of the store experience, about an hour is plenty for me. And that includes try on time.
I've chosen 3 main stores to shop at. All are church thrifts. I like knowing that my money is going to the church for its needed upkeep or to its missions, even though I don't belong to any of those churches and am not Christian. The prices are pretty much rock bottom. Returns would be possible in the form of donating it back - which people who don't try on often do. I don't do that because the stores I've chosen are small and that affords me less distraction. One, I go to weekly and I've been going for well over a decade and a half and there are many regulars and it's also a social experience as you get to know about people's lives.
One practical drawback is the try on. You have to use the ladies room, though depending on the garment, some stores do have a wall mirror or a place where you can see yourself reflected. It can be almost impossible to find places to hang what you are about to try on or your own clothing. I end up placing my clothing right on the floor in one place. In another, I use the baby changing table. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, eh. Sometimes the mirrors are like in a funhouse and the lighting is the worst possible. That also goes for the lighting in the store portion itself. Often, they are using the spaghetti bulbs with their yellowed lighting that is bad that you have to take what you think is a brown garment into the next room that does have some sunlight and where you are surprised to see that it's purple. The lighting can be so dim that I take reading glasses to try to be able to discover what the fabric content is or the size. I need a miner's headlamp.
One odd thing I've found in thrifting is that I follow the trends to decide what I might want to experiment with and I believe that runway is about 3 years ahead of what most folks are finding and buying retail. For some reason, people tend to donate items that have strong similarities to what is "new". They give up on them exactly at the moment they have begun to have some fashion currency.
I do have a lot of clothing and a significant rate of "churn". I guess I'm very fickle. I've been successful at ebay shopping but I keep vowing to stop. It's much more expensive than the church thrifts plus even if I think I've found the most comfortable shirt in the world, as I did recently, and then buy up some multiples in a few other colors, pretty soon I see that, yes, but it's only that comfortable worn outside but tucked in it actually even looks uncomfortable because it doesn't blouse at all, not a millimeter. So it's not The One Shirt To Rule Them All after all.
I'm finding I feel less and less of FOMO as the idea that some piece of clothing is so important isn't working for me. For me, I think it's about how you wear your clothing, the energy you project. The reverse of the old "When you look good, you feel good." I think when you feel good - or even recall what it feels like to have felt good! - you look good. And most people don't want to do a lot of thinking so if you project that you feel/look good, they're likely to pick up on that and agree.
I'm in a psychological position where I think the most useful function of clothing is not to broadcast your "brand" - what you want people to think about you - but to approximate what people you want to join are wearing. I got this idea from one of Edith Head's books and it makes total sense to me. At the same time, I don't often need to do that and tend to think of clothing cinematically, as perhaps a romantic and adventurous protagonist. So when I try something on, in that cramped, ill lit space with the distorted mirror, what I see in my mind's eye is myself striding across a wide screen.
