ThriftStyle: The Ultimate Bargain Shopper's Guide to Smart Fashion

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About ThriftStyle: The Ultimate Bargain Shopper's Guide

Product Description A must-have guide for bargain-hunting fashionistas looking to make a statement without sabotaging their budgets.With this easy-to-use resource, savvy shoppers can cultivate upscale, upcycled wardrobes at thrift and consignment store prices. Shoppers will learn to navigate the racks of their local consignment shop, spot name brands like Versace, Dior, and Burberry, select the best quality items, and repair secondhand clothes that need some love. Photo-filled chapters on thrifted handbags, jewelry, scarves, and other accessories show what's available and give tips for distinguishing quality items from fakes. Interviews with expert tailors, dry cleaners, shoe repair wizards, and fabric-dyeing professionals explain what makes a damaged piece of clothing worth renovating. Before-and-after photos show what can be done to refashion less-than-perfect finds. Review *This comprehensive guide is written in a friendly, approachable way, as if your cool aunts took you along to their favorite Salvation Army shop. It's much more than a thrift store junket, though. All three authors are seasoned thrifters and have years of writing and TV experience (twins Allison and Margaret Engel collaborated on plays and Food Network's Food Finds; TV producer Reise Moore has worked with A&E's Biography and for Animal Planet). Here they canvas 165 stores around the country and then stage a "fashion shoot" using real people in all-thrifted ensembles (Roger Snider's photos are charming and plentiful). The book also features trips to the tailors, dry cleaners, reweavers, and sewists who help whip the bargain finds into shape—a nice touch to see the people behind the scenes. Throughout, the authors convey the joy of discovering designer pieces for pennies, and the chapters on defining your own style and developing your eye to find those hidden treasures among the racks are informative. An extensive resources list includes many online and app options, from finding a store to learning to sew to stain removal. Lightly laid atop the shopping advice is an admonition against fast fashion and waste. VERDICT: Slip this into your valise the next time you visit thriftlandia. — Library Journal, starred review About the Author Allison Engel has written articles for Esquire, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and others. She helps run the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and regularly writes about LA's fashion scene. She co-authored Food Finds: America's Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them with her sister, Margaret. Television producer Maricia "Reise" Moore is a thrift-store fanatic. She lives in Los Angeles. Margaret Engel lives in Washington, D.C., where she runs the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation and helped create the Newseum. She was a columnist for Glamour and a reporter for The Washington Post. She co-authored Food Finds: America's Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them with her sister, Allison, and co-wrote three Fodor's guidebooks. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction   Thrifting hits all the right buttons. It’s good for the wallet, good for the planet and good for your creative side.                 —Allison Engel   If loving thrifting is wrong, I don’t want to be right.                 —Reise Moore   As the sign says at the Stuff Etc consignment stores, “Wear it like you paid full price.”                 —Margaret Engel   Every last item you see modeled in this book is thrifted: clothes, shoes, jewelry, and accessories. Most items were purchased in 2016, a few days before our photo shoots. If we were lucky, we scored an extra-special bargain at the $2 and $3 clothing sales at Salvation Army and Goodwill. In the course of this project, we visited more than 165 thrift stores in multiple states. For cool points, we would like to say we are battle worn after making our way through all these stores. But t