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THRIFT FLIPS

BY SNEHA PANACKAL

Thrift stores are often home to buried gems, clothes that you couldn’t find anywhere else. They have a variety of styles from basically every fashion era. Goth Y2K boots? Yeah, they got that. 80’s disco mom jeans? They’re selling it for a $15.30 flapper dress? Just head on over to your local thrift store. It’s a great place to experiment with clothes, and find which style fits you the most, which isn’t something that you can do in fast fashion stores such as Zara or H&M, since most of their pieces are quickly mass produced to cater to the latest trends. But at the end of the day, there are still some people who cannot find clothes that fit their style or their desired look. This is where thrift flipping comes in. 

A lot of people also experiment with the clothing they find at thrift stores. This practice is called “thrift-flipping”, where people take their thrifted clothes and alter it to fit their own personal preference. A lot of the clothes being thrift-flipped are vintage/antique, and it’s quite common for people to alter parts of the clothing to make the pieces look more modern. 

A great example of a youtuber who used to do thrift-flips is Ashley from best dressed.  Her style is very much “vintage-classy-cottage core-sweetheart” and the methods she uses to transform her clothes is quite interesting. She has quite a few tips on how to flip your clothes properly, without tearing the fabric or ruining any of its pre-existing patterns. Here are a few of her thrift-flips: 

She is just one person, though and her style is very niche. If you’re interested in thrift flipping, Youtube and Pinterest are two great platforms that are home to a lot of creators with different techniques and approaches to thrift flipping, making them great places for beginners!

Thrift flipping is a fascinating practice that helps a lot of people express their creativity through fashion. Seeing someone take a 50’s housewife dress and transform it into a sultry baby-doll dress is fascinating. There are also people who buy two or more pieces of different eras and fuse them together to form a gorgeous and unique article of clothing. Every single person’s fashion style is different and this is a perfect way for people to play around with different types of clothes to find what fits them the best.

1 .”THRIFT FLIP ft. my quarantine insanity” YouTube, uploaded by bestdressed, Jun 13, 2020, https://youtu.be/XXCAmEK5zAk

2. “THRIFT FLIP // turning ugly clothes into cute clothes” YouTube, uploaded by bestdressed, Jul 19, 2019, https://youtu.be/ZFRnQ-Ti6Is