#001: Only Thrifting w/ Erin Wylie
A new series where we talk about thrifting. Only thrifting:) Debuting with the co-author of Blackbird Spyplane + Concorde.
🚨 A Tiny Apt. Subscription gift—Right Here, Right NOW. In honor of A Tiny Apt.’s 150th edition TODAY, I’m sharing a tiny limited-time paid subscription special—a full year of A Tiny Apt. for just $30 (reduced from $50:). That’s more shape-shifting ideas for our spaces, upgrading our personal style, essays about wealth and cats and TRUE LOVE, finding vintage things with so much SOUL that they make a room or an outfit positively SING. And YES, RAD vintage giveaways for Paid subscribers, too.
Today’s edition is an example of the kinds of features I spend loads of time thinking about, writing, building, resourcing so YOU and the people you love can think about the core staples in your life—from statement chairs to cool sneakers to book shelves—with new eyes and new ✨. Come thrifting with me or hunting for a glorious new dining table or experimenting with skinny belts and AWESOME skirts (why not?). We do it here…together. Thank you for subscribing, for being a part of this growing community and contributing to a TINY world that is expanding in so many beautiful/useful/✨✨ ways. Because of YOU…❤️xxCb
NOTE To Subscribers: Our brand-new “Only Thrifting” column is free today, but in future, it will be available to only Paid subscribers. Enjoy and please do share if the spirit moves you:).
I read a book a while back that disclosed some interesting data around how much longer happy people live as opposed to unhappy people. No surprise, one of the big takeaways was to spend most of your waking hours doing something you love. Something that awakens and feeds you. Something that never feels like an emergency dental visit or unloading the dishwasher or being somewhere you really don’t want to be. Ie: The more time people spend doing things that make us happy, the more time we spend being ALIVE…and HAPPY, too.
You will not be surprised (in the least) that this is my relationship w/thrifting. It’s one of the only things I can do for endless amounts of time. It’s like when I go into a thrift store or a flea market or an antiques mall or someone’s driveway, I immediately shift into Einstein Time; a kind of space/time that feels boundless…and full of possibility. I’ve shared this before, but what I love about thrifting has almost nothing to do with shopping and EVERYTHING to do with what I might find. What I might learn. What I might rescue from obscurity. What backstory might be resurrected and retold anew because of noticing this particular forgotten treasure.
I had a reading with a well-known spiritual guide early last year and she called this special instinct Exploration without Expectation. And, that’s IT, I think (not just in thrifting but in LIFE)—never knowing what lies ahead tucked away (possibly behind some bad art). Discovering something magical + brilliant I don’t even know I’m looking for. A tiny thing that might mysteriously crack open a part of my consciousness from eight lifetimes ago. When I was the town hat maker/mystic and I lived in a stone house from 2600 BC built with floorboards from God-knows-how-many-years before that (floorboards that maybe concealed a long ago stashed Viking treasure). People ask me a lot why I thrift, and I don’t necessarily tell them about the past lives or Viking treasure. But I do tell them that I think it’s a practice/ritual that is constantly allowing me to know myself better...
And other people, too. I make friends when I thrift. I thrift with my friends. I want to be friends with other people who love to thrift as much as I do.
So, that’s what we’re doing here in this new Tiny series—talking about thrifting. Only thrifting…why we do it, why we love it, how it shapes us or changes us (the environment and local communities, too). How it energizes us, too. And, here’s the funny thing about talking about thrifting: It inevitably opens up new doors/secret passageways to get to know and have compassion for people—their lives and histories, their things…things they lost, gave away, maybe even still dream about.
I know a lot of you feel the same. And so do many of my dear friends—people I admire and learn from (and like to thrift with, too). One of those people is Erin Wylie, a writer and a design scout who also happens to be one of the founders/authors of the newsletters Blackbird Spyplane and Concorde. Like me, Erin was an editor many moons ago. In fact, we went thrifting together on the Upper East Side in 2009 for a story she was editing in Time Out New York (evidence below, as well as a mention of the vintage Bonnie Cashin coat for $25 we shamefully left behind 👹).
Mostly, I’ve been itching to start a column like this to go a little deeper into the more soulful parts of thrifting. How it connects us with histories + crafts + cultures + traditions…JUST as much as the beautiful + strange things we find. Erin is one of those people who really gets that…and loves the whole spectrum of thrifting as much as I do…and I think you do, too. And after you’ve read it, I’d love to know (ie: drop it in the comments): Do you think a series like this would be an interesting podcast?…imagine Antiques Roadshow-meets-This American Life-meets…My So Called Life…maybe? 💫. Okay, let’s get into it…xxCb
CB: Erin…I’m so happy you’re here…15 years after our thrifting adventure on the Upper East Side, that—thanks to your photo!!—we can now save in perpetuity here on A Tiny Apt. FOREVER.
ERIN: Thank you! I’m so happy to be here…thrifting really unites us, doesn’t it?
CB: YES, it does. Growing up, I used to go to yard sales with my mom. We didn’t call it thrifting back then (I think we just called it shopping…or summertime:). What is your earliest memory of thrifting…or whatever you liked to call it?
ERIN: There are so many names for it…my earliest thrifting memories are of going to garage sales with my mom when I was a toddler. She would pull me and my brother around in a wagon as we went from sale to sale in our neighborhood. People would throw open their garage doors and arrange things they wanted to sell in their driveway. Sometimes they’d have free lemonade or popcorn to lure us in. It was a lot of stay-at-home moms and retired couples who had time on their hands and were curious about going through other people’s things. I mean, how could you not love it for the pure voyeurism alone? I don’t remember anything specific that we bought, just the experience of looking. I think the possibility of finding something great is just addictive.
Erin taking a bathroom break whilst thrifting in California.
CB: I don’t have a formal thrifting practice. I just kind of get the urge and block off a few hours/a half day and just GO. How often do you thrift? Do you have a routine that you keep sacred or is it just whatever/whenever?
ERIN: I don’t have a practice, it’s usually just on a whim. Sometimes you get the itch. I do frequently hit up the Alameda Flea and Oakland Vintage Market, and whenever I find myself with an hour or so to kill I’ll pop into a Goodwill or Salvation Army near me. One thing we have out here in the Bay Area are incredible estate sales, that are often in vibey mid-century homes. A lot of the best resellers are fueled by the estate sales here, including one of my favorite vintage shops in San Francisco, Body Philosophy Club.
I had more of a thrifting routine when I lived in NYC where it’s easier to pop into places and there are a lot more of them. For instance, I used to work at a fashion forecasting company located on Madison Square Park, and at least once a week I’d spend my lunch break pinging between Vintage Thrift (a treasure trove!), Housing Works, and City Opera Thrift, which were all clustered around 23rd Street & 3rd Avenue. I love going to places repeatedly because you learn when new stuff gets put out and it helps you calibrate your radar for what’s actually good.
In 2014, my partner Jonah and I moved to Oakland, California, and that changed my thrifting habits. I miss all the NYC street finds! You post great furniture and things on IG that are left on the street as trash, which I love because I used to pick stuff off the street, too. We still use a little table we found on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn in our bedroom. And, if we pull the thread just a tiny bit on what we’re talking about when we talk about thrifting, it’s really about what we do with “junk.” My great-grandfather used to pick at the town dump, which back then was a pile at the outskirts of town. He’d pull out bakelite barrettes that he’d clean up for my mom and radios that he’d fix up. That’s the root of thrifting: What can we do with the things people have left behind or decided they are done with? Some people still see value in these things.
CB: Exactly. Thrifting has always been a sort of an under-the-radar, IYKYK kind of thing. But lately, it's getting a lot more traction and interest, likely because of the planet burning and so many glorious TikTok hauls. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the world's sudden piqued interest.
ERIN: Picking up where I left off, it’s about the sheer volume of trash that already exists on this planet and that is being exponentially added to every day. The amount of junk is overwhelming and, surely, concern for the environment and disgust over places like Shein who pump out eye-watering quantities of cheap, poorly made clothing produced under terrible labor conditions is fueling some of the increased interest in thrifting. Buying used doesn’t solve the problem, but it’s one of the only ways we can disengage from that gnarly production/consumption cycle.
Beyond that, people who are interested in fashion and design—especially those who, like you and me, grew up with limited financial resources—always find their way to thrifting. I bonded with Molly Ringwald over this when I interviewed her for our newsletter earlier this year: Even though she was making good money from movies as a teen, her parents kept her on an allowance, and so she turned to thrift shopping in order to dress the way she wanted to.
A lot of people these days are talking about finding their “personal style” and I see that it could be hard to do that when we're so inundated with images. I developed my personal style in the aisles of countless thrift shops where I was free to find what spoke to me, rather than what was being sold to me. The beauty of a good thrift store is that it’s not merchandized and it spans eras, so you’re not being swayed toward what some brand or buyer thinks is a trend for the next month. You learn to trust your gut and hone your OWN eye.
Finally, whether people consciously realize it or not, the quality of clothes being made today has gone way down. If you compare, for instance, a jacket you find in the Gap right now with one you thrifted from the ‘90s, there’s a stark difference in the quality of materials and construction. Everybody is cutting so many corners in order to maintain profits, and this means cheaper fabrics, cheaper labor, and worse products. (Jonah investigated these issues for our newsletter here, in case any of you are interested in going deeper.) Thrifting often leads you to less expensive, higher quality goods that are unlike anything you can find for sale in stores today. What’s not to like about that?
CB: I mean, you’re preaching to the CHOIR. You and I have known each other a really long time. And when you were an editor at Time Out New York, we went thrifting together for a story. How do you think you've evolved as a thrifter? What does it teach you/add to your life other than a fantastic vintage sweatshirt?
ERIN: Yes, we did that thrifting story back in 2009! And I can’t believe neither of us bought the $25 Bonnie Cashin coat! (I am (still) sick with regret…!) As I’ve gotten older I don’t go as much for the loud prints and ironic tees and coffee mugs that I used to delight in. I’m more selective, interested in higher-quality pieces and I want to find things I’ll keep for a long time. I always love finding handmade items like charmingly wonky ceramics, woven baskets, naive paintings, and hand-sewn dresses. I’m also always drawn to books and unique textiles.
The Oakland White Elephant sale, an Erin Wylie thrifting favorite (I mean, just looking at this photo gives me heart palpitations).
Beyond all the fantastic sweatshirts I’ve picked up, thrifting has given me an amazing education into fashion and design. Studying and sifting through so many things over the years has taught me how clothing is made—literally, like, what seams are being used and is it lined? Through thrifting, I’ve had access to designer items that I’d otherwise never be able to touch, try on, or take home.
“And, in a non-depressing way, stepping into a thrift store reminds me we’re mortal. Seeing other people’s things laid out for sale reminds me of the fleetingness of it all. As the saying go, you can’t take it with you…” —Erin Wylie
CB: I’ve always remembered you’re from the Philadelphia area, and I recall you telling me stories about you and two other friends going thrifting on weekends. I definitely have a list of five or six tippy-top people in my life that I love to thrift with…my mom, my friend Gigi, Eden, Tracy, Aya, Kellie…who do you love to thrift with or do you mostly like to do it alone?
ERIN: I have a few friends that I thrift with, but I really get into the zone when I’m flicking through the racks. I like to do it alone or with people I can “be alone with” like Jonah or my mom. Mom is my lifelong thrifting partner. Jonah and I have been together for a really long time and, while he doesn’t always like to sift through items IRL as much as I do, he’s got a great eye. We always make a point of hitting up thrift stores when we travel together, and I can think of many things that we’ve picked up while we were in Tokyo, Paris, or just back visiting NYC.
CB: You and your partner Jonah started Blackbird Spyplane (and now Concorde) four years ago, before the blitz of fantastic Substacks emerged. How has your sensibilities as lifelong thrifters influenced how you make such an iconic newsletter?
ERIN: Yeah, it’s wild to think that we launched Blackbird Spyplane in May 2020 and Concorde, the women’s version of the newsletter, in 2022. Going down rabbit holes on the internet to unearth vintage is something we’ve both done for decades, so we made that a big part of the BBSP DNA. And shortly after we launched, we realized we had too many good finds to put in the newsletter, so we opened up SpyMall where we share our vintage finds for our readers. We have both shopped on eBay for a long time, and we love it since it still feels so unruly and undesigned. We like a little friendly aesthetic chaos, which is partly why we use collage a lot for the newsletter. We like things that have a sense of the human hand. We cover a lot of new, small/independent designers of fashion, furniture, and decor but we do focus a lot on thrift and vintage. I’m constantly on eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, Everything But The House… so many resale sites. And our first year doing the newsletter coincided with a huge boom of IG sellers and makers. We’ve covered so many good ones in the newsletter, and some have since opened brick-and-mortar stores.
CB: Okay, I want to hear about some of your favorite thrifted finds? Wherever you happen to be writing to me right now, can you see anything around you that has a good story attached…something you’d never forget?
ERIN: Let’s see, I’ll try to narrow this down by what’s in sight or has come into my life recently…
I recently wrote about this for Concorde: I’ve been into small, weird ornate bags that basically only hold a phone, and I recently found this gorgeous glass-beaded velvet pouch. It has a faux-tortoise lid made of celluloid, and a velvet ribbon tied in a bow that serves as the handle. But what I love most about it is the tiny creased black and white photo I found tucked inside that, judging from their outfits, was taken in the 1890s. Who are these women? Did one of them own this bag? As I wrote in the newsletter: “Finding connections to the past through someone else’s once-cherished object is a big part of what has always driven my interest in vintage and thrift shopping. Discovering this photograph reminds me that I’m just a temporary custodian of all this stuff…”
Jonah and I found this Bruno Mathsson Eva chair—an iconic design that’s in the MoMA’s permanent collection!—at a secondhand furniture store in Oakland right after we moved here in 2014. I love how lightweight and small it is, and how modern it looks for something that was designed in the 1940s. I think we paid around $500 for it, and now you can’t find them for under $2,000.
The Oakland Museum Women’s Board puts on this massive White Elephant sale every year. They have everything, truly. You would love it! I bought a bunch of things including a couple of woven baskets for $40, an old Andy Warhol print for $16, and a great DIY toy book from the ‘70s for $6. I also got these pewter molds that can be used to shape chocolate, ice cream and butter from the early 1900s. I thought it would be fun to have banana-shaped butter, and I’m going to make walnut-shaped ice cream for my next dinner party. One caveat: antique pewter may contain lead...
I saw that you recently wrote about a thrifted Caché jacket, so I have to share this reversible maxi skirt I got for $20. Caché was always the Herve Leger-lite brand that people would go to for school dances, but I never bought in. This is the first thing I’ve owned by that brand. The colorful hand drawn, squint-and-it-could-be-Gauguin print spoke to me. I’ll be packing this for my summer vacation in Greece.
CB: Give us something service-y...three favorite places to thrift and why?
ERIN: I love going to the Alameda Flea Market, held by the docks outside of Oakland every first Sunday of the month. It’s huge—about 800 booths — and has legit antiques alongside vintage clothing. It’s nice to thrift outside instead of in a store that smells like worn shoes. The newer Oakland Vintage Market, held the first Saturday of every month, is a fraction of the size and really well curated.
Artifacts in Iowa City is a gorgeous mess of incredibly vibe-y objects, and it seems to be staffed entirely by cool writers and poets. I was staying in Iowa City a couple summers ago for a writing workshop and bought so many things there that I had to mail a huge box home. One thing I picked up is this proto-sticker book from 1940. You have to cut out the stickers and they’re printed on gummed paper similar to the old lick-n-stick stamps. I can't believe something this old and delicate made its way to me. And I think it was $4.
I love thrifting when I travel because you get to experience a different flavor of the place, and there’s often great people-watching. So, the last time I was in Tokyo I checked out the flea market held every Sunday at Hanazono-Jinja Shrine in Shinjuku. It didn’t disappoint! People came through fitted, and I bought a beautiful kasuri-weave kimono fabric from the ‘50s there for $6. I’m thinking of using it to make curtains.✨
🪩 Don’t forget…all the good collectible TIMELESS things for home/closet/makeup kit you may need/want are right here in our super-duper edited A Tiny Shop (+ if you love something we may earn a tiny commission). See you over there:)🦄.
I love this post! This is an excellent series idea and would make a superb podcast. I would listen in a heartbeat.
I went to a costume warehouse liquidation sale yesterday. You should see the haul--it would make you proud!!