Depop fun finds
+ Thick Thrift LA Sunday + NYC next Wednesday!!
A new offering I’ve been toying with for months, the fruits of my daily late night Depop searches, a keenly honed algorithm — sharing here with you. I’m a big believer in the combo of secondhand shopping + supporting independent artists/designers. Find big brand items secondhand so that you can dedicate more $$ to the people who truly rely on your business (…speaking from a place of truly relying on your business). While buying items DIRECTLY from vintage shops/Instagram sellers/friends is ideal - Depop takes 10% of each sale via their app and was acquired by Etsy for $1.6 billion in 2021 okkk - Depop can be an amazing archive of vintage brands, t-shirt designs, color inspo, and more. I’ve found super discounted Nancy Stella Soto pants for Lukaza on Poshmark, multiple pairs of Hoka Bondi sneakers for myself on Depop + Poshmark, some cool archival queer tees for less than $30, a vintage gardening tool shirt I’ve coveted for years since Body Philosophy Club posted one, the list goes on.
The strength of Depop versus Poshmark is definitely the existence of their “suggested for you” “$20 and under: our top picks for you” and “based on your likes and saves” sections of the home page. The specificity of search terms become less vital when the algorithm learns your taste and sifts through thousands of available items to present that which may be of interest. I also want to acknowledge that a lot of items on Depop feels extremely low-priced, “priced-to-sell” to me — $15 for a tshirt, $18 for shorts - and that as someone who cannot sustain a clothing business at these low prices, sometimes prickly feelings come up when I’m looking at it!! Other times the deals are exhilarating!! Abundance mindset: there is space and an audience for the $18 thrifted REI shorts and $78 handpainted play shorts <3
Anyways, here’s a shortlist of what I’ve been eyeing lately — across sizes & gender expressions:
Very into soccer / sporty nylon shorts lately, probably inspired by the NO BROS screenprinted Machine shorts I picked up at their backyard sale and have been loving for all activities (tho fascinated by the power of branding that not one person has commented on the text change up, i.e. it’s consistently “love the Umbro shorts”, even though the shorts blanks themselves are just a generic knockoff)
Something about the combination of puff print, “fresh fruit” font, and colorful fruit imagery is so delightful to me! I just bought aforementioned gardening tools shirt so I am set in the oversized vintage tee department at the moment, but I hope this one goes to a good home. At the least it has definitely inspired me to do a puff screenprint shirt (which I recently learned at Print Shop LA just involves adding some drops of puff-enabling-magic into your regular screenprint ink)!!
I have Adidas striped jogging pants that I got at Out of the Closet in the early days of the pandemic - hoped they’d fit since dressing rooms at thrift stores apparently aren’t coming back, they did - and I love them so much. These remind me of those. I think the reason I don’t buy as much on Depop as I might like to is because the sizing can be unpredictable. For example, is the seller sure these rather petite-looking pants aren’t a *youth* large?? I much prefer to buy vintage online from trusted sellers, such as Sure Please, who will try items on, send as many detail photos as I request, and give reliable information about measurements and condition. To me it’s worth paying a higher price for that service. And in turn, I also try and offer that level of customer-centered-care as a seller, recognizing that it can be difficult and a little stressful to buy clothes from a distance!
Jams World is a consummate IYKYK vintage brand - and if you don’t know, I’ll tell you now. Jams World is an iconic brand that I became familiar with from a young age because my parents’ sold it at their store in Portland, Oregon and my mom had a strong collection of their print dresses, which I’ve since acquired. Jams World was started in the 1960s by a guy from Southern California who made a line of baggy, colorful swimsuits after seeing “…a Life Magazine article depicting Russian people at the Black Sea resorts wearing their bathrobes and PJ's down to the beach.” His Ukranian father told him that, indeed, people would cut off their pajamas above the knee because they didn’t have swimsuits. The original brand name, Jams, was short for Pajamas. "We target fun-loving, free-spirited people, who have open minds, who are unafraid, who are confident, who feel good about themselves, and who want to celebrate life with color, freedom, form and imagery." — umm, same. The brand still exists today but it’s the 90s-era prints on their crushed rayon fabric that hit the hardest. Secondhand prices for Jams World vary a lot, $20 for this dress is a steal —
Honorable mentions which I liked but have since been sold, still inspiring TYSM:
Today in fact I am not trying to personally sell you anything at all because my online shop is closed! I’m ~out of office~ with no way to ship items!
This Sunday in LA my Dyke Soccer buddy Zoë and her spouse are going to be running my booth at Thick Thrift which was rescheduled to a day that I’m out of town! It is mostly exhilarating and only a little bit anxiety-inducing to hand off almost my entire inventory to someone else! I’m so grateful to her for being excited to help out and have total trust in their ability to represent my brand & treat my customers with the utmost care and love! Go visit them!!! Our booth is right by the entrance!
We’re gearing up for my Zoe’s epic Armory Show solo booth opening with Rutger Brandt Gallery this Thursday at the Javits Center in Manhattan! If you’re a New Yorker, come on by!! We should be around the booth/fair most days, except Saturday afternoon I am elated to have an appointment at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn :) :)
AND next Wednesday from 4-7PM I’m doing my first ever NYC pop-up at my dear friend Noah & Gaby’s worker-owned sandwich shop & bakery, Sea and Soil! I have *47.5 pounds* of clothes to share with y’all, and will be offering sliding scale prices! They are making handmade pizzas!! It’s going to be amazing!!! Come thru!!
Currently visiting family, playing a lot of tennis, sleeping in late, and reading Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis which so far is primarily giving Gay Gossip Girl and reminding me of the many hours I spent reading those godforsaken books as a tween. I’m fascinated by the specificity of the queer NY cultural references — anyone else scratch their head at the Fredericks & Mae cutting board / homewares-shop-owner character’s overlaps with real-life-dykes?? Hmm!!
LOVE YA!! Thank you for being here! Lmk if you thought this was fun! Online orders will resume approx. Sep. 16!!
xoxoxo
Isabel