What Working at a Secondhand Shop Gets You
A pristine Pendleton suit for free.99, Grease-y leather pants, Gap Gucci, and more.
Hello! After my nightmarish stints at perfume shops (tragic that perfume people can be so awful and take their delightful work with ZERO levity and the stress level of someone realizing they’re failing to diffuse a bomb), I moved on to a local secondhand shop, where I’ve been having as good a time as one can at a sales job, with some truly lovely coworkers and access to a 25% discount on all items sub-$50, with which I have sadly been running rampant. Below (after the Sellout Segment, which I explain after this intro), you’ll find a slew of pieces I’ve copped over the past month or so, most from the store I work at, some from other stores or Depop, and some gifted to me by generous and cool friends of the blog—nothing over about $50 to be seen (and tons under $15!). From spiked bras to skullcaps, I hope you enjoy this foray into the mildly deranged shopping habits of a secondhand salesperson.
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Sellout Segment
Before we begin the main event, I have decided that I’m going to try and include a few items every week that I either genuinely want or recently purchased with my own $$ in an effort to be more consistent with my affiliate links without being a total monster and compromising the quality of my blog, most of which is, as you know, centered around more abstract content and secondhand or DIY buys. I will always provide rationale for my recs and they will never be behind a paywall—even just clicking them helps me in my efforts to start getting free stuff from companies I’ve been giving free PR to for going on 5 years now, so your attention is much appreciated (and the stuff I’m including is actually cool and/or useful—no $890 fuckass jelly flats here, thanks)!
I believe this is a dupe for Benefit’s $28 “Benetint,” and I noticed it in one of my frequent drugstore perusals while waiting for too long for a TriMet bus to come pick me up after a long day at work. Of course, the best color (Cherry Cola, a cross between wine and brick red) has already sold out (or been made artificially scarce, who can say!), but once it’s in stock, I’m grabbing it—I love any makeup that functions like watercolors (my favorite medium) and sinks sheerly into the skin. I was hopeful about the once-viral Milk Cooling Water Jelly ($26), but even its reddest shade, Chill, still pulls much too cool and pink for my liking, I prefer a ruddier hue.
More of my thoughts will be in
’s blog soon, but I was impressed by the projection and longevity of the Snif Off the Grid candle ($34+), which is the only candle I’ve ever owned that justified its price tag’s worth by any stretch of the imagination. However, its sandalwood and amber proved a bit too heady for me, so I’d love to try something a bit sweeter and softer. I have been told by my financial advisor, Dril, that as someone who is poor I am not allowed to spend $34 on a candle at the moment, but I would HAPPILY take a free one and sing its praises if it’s as good as I think it’ll be. I am never again buying a $10 candle that smells like hand sanitizer on fire and tunnels into oblivion immediately now that I know these are an option.
Does anyone else want to rip the flesh off their face due to recurrent perioral dermatitis? Just me? Well, every few years, something triggers it, and it gets so bad I have a hard time feeling good about anything re: my body because it’s so blatant and painful. This time, I believe, the dread PD was triggered by Sodium Lauryl Sulfate in my old toothpaste (it’s a pointless foaming agent that only exists to personally ruin my life, I’m convinced), but I do have very sensitive teeth, so I found what seems to be one of the only sensitive teeth pastes (?) that does not have SLS but, importantly, DOES have fluoride.
Ok, to get the most expensive item (and one I did not get for free) out of the way first, I found this sweatshirt from the brand Barragán, which had a big moment a few years back but now has a broken, empty website and a confusing social media presence. I haggled it down to $50 from $70 on Depop, which is pretty good, considering the only other one I could find online is $200 and requires a Basic.Space membership to buy. I will admit, this was my least responsible purchase of the bunch, but I panicked because I knew how rare it was and how perfectly my style it is—I love the armorlike construction, the industrial, grunge wash, and most of all, the holes through which the necklace shown above was placed when the sweatshirt came. I plan to swap it out for some silver jewelry when I wear it this fall/winter. It fits perfectly, which somehow I was confident enough about when I saw the Depop listing that I pulled the trigger.
Next, a Pendleton skirt suit that I got in my work’s donate pile for $0, though it once cost over $300 total (maybe in the early 2000s or 90s judging by the state of the tags). It’s 100% wool and in near-perfect condition, save for a few tiny, possibly moth-made holes on the jacket, but it shouldn’t cost more than $15 to get those professionally sealed, and they’re virtually invisible anyway. Fits like a glove with no tailoring! I lucked out! The hat is a raffia thing in the vein, shape-wise, of the Emily Dawn Long Wanda, and I bought at the store I work at for like $5 with my discount, maybe $7.50 originally. The boots…
…I got for winter, also on Depop for about $50 haggled down from around $65, and they are vintage Justin brand. They are in pretty great shape, no peeling or dry rot I can see or feel, and my favorite part is that the silver buckles and straps can be removed with ease to let the Sezane Bridget-esque straight shaft shine without interruption. I shoved some Dr. Scholl's (these, to be precise) in those puppies and am excited to wear test them once the weather turns.