I am currently going though the Purge. You may be familiar with the Purge: it takes place when you move, or renovate, or are someone’s executor or beneficiary. It also happens when you become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff you have accumulated over the course of your wretched materialistic life. Some it might be of value, sentimental or otherwise, but most of it is not, unless you are very famous or have exquisite taste. I remember going to a preview of Katherine Hepburn’s estate at Sotheby’s in New York twenty years ago. I had no intention of bidding on anything, which was a good thing, as the newspaper hair curlers she used as a young stage actress were among the items, and they ultimately went for thousands of dollars. Don’t even ask about her Louis Vuitton luggage.
But I digress. I am purging because I have too much of everything. Most people my age do, and let’s all agree that there’s a fine line between collecting and hoarding. I decided to start with the most egregious area in the house, and that would be my closet. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m going to admit that I have spent stupid money on clothes. You wouldn’t think a radio career would warrant it, but there were/are public appearances, weddings, galas, so on and so forth. My aspirational mother raised me to have an appreciation of good design and a horror of fast fashion and cheap material. She also suggested that a well-dressed woman is always more popular, and that men find them more attractive. I remember her telling me that men liked women to wear fur around their faces, to which I said “Why? Because it reminds them of vaginas?”, to which SHE said, as she often did, “Don’t be bold”.
You’ve heard this before, but it bears reminding: when you are purging your wardrobe, you divide everything into four groups, or piles: what you keep, what you donate, what you throw out, and what you might hope to sell. In the last instance, you can either try to peddle your stuff online, on eBay or Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, which involves effort and dealing with strangers, or you can consign, which brings me to the focus of this essay. I do a lot of consignment, or at least I did. Consignment covers a wide spectrum of clothing, from couture pieces that sell for thousands of dollars, even second hand, to real deals that keep the kids coming in. Consignment stores are quite different from thrift shops. The clothing is not donated, or bought in bulk, but rather entrusted by the owner to the retailer to sell, usually with a 50 percent commission. After a period of time, say six months to a year, if an item hasn’t sold, it is donated to a non-profit organization, such as a shelter or clothing program. It’s a socially and environmentally worthy way of cleaning out your closet, but before you start filling garbage bags full of castoffs to haul into your local consignment store for fun and profit, you should know a few things:
They are very choosy and prefer well known and on trend designer labels
They can tell a knock off from the real thing when you walk in the door
Many if not most of your precious items will be rejected
Unless you are consigning very high ticket items in perfect condition, like Chanel jackets or Hermes bags, you will not see much of a return on your initial investment
At least this is the case at my consignment store, which is one of the busiest and most popular in the city. Last week, I took in several garment bags full of clothing, as well as three purses and two dozen pairs of shoes. They accepted two shirts and four pairs of shoes. I was strangely hurt. They used to take most of my offerings, but I appear to be running out of desirable designer duds. Fair enough - that was the original plan, wasn’t it? In any case, the rejected clothing goes straight to the New Circles clothing bank, so I wish the person who wears my old Theory suit and Stuart Weitzman pumps to a job interview nothing but the best. Get the Kate Spade bag too.
Some thoughts on shoes, while we’re down there. Women, and some men, talk far too much about shoes, possibly because we are traumatized by how much we can spend on admittedly beautiful but inevitably brutal instruments of torture. At my son’s college graduation dinner, I watched a stunning and brilliant Rhodes Scholar take off her undeniably glamorous stilettos in the cloak room, wincing in pain and relief, and wondered to myself why we are still doing this. I used to, of course, but now that I have injured myself sufficiently, I am shoeing myself more sensibly, albeit with a tinge of regret. Some observations:
If you can run in Manolo Blahniks, as Sarah Jessica Parker maintains she can, then godspeed. But I don’t believe you.
If both you and your mother wear army boots, I will follow you through the Apocalypse.
If you wear Crocs outside your garden, I support your right to choose, but I cannot join you. Ever.
If you are a loafer, a white sneaker, a black booter, or a Birkenstocker, we can walk arm in arm in comfort and style.
But back to consignment. If and when your items are accepted and sold, you can be paid by cheque or store credit. I always take store credit, which puts me back in the cycle. I swear I once considered a little black dress that I realized I used to own. If you shop consignment, be prepared: the sizes are mostly small, just like the rich skinnies who drop them off, myself excluded. The items are usually in very good shape, but you won’t get a discount if they’re not. The staff is supremely helpful, although irritatingly gorgeous. The sales, which they have often, are great, but try not to load up on clothes you don’t really need, because you’ll end up back where you started.
Good luck with your own Purge. Have fun, dare to be bold, and think twice when you wear fur around your face.
Comedian Ron James is our guest this week on the podcast. He’s funny, not surprisingly, and very opinionated. Prepare yourself for a bracing blast of East Coast humour. And once again, please consider sharing this newsletter with your friends, and maybe upgrading to paid. As you now know, I’m wearing second hand clothes.
So timely. So hard to declutter. Easier to tell others what to do than to do it myself. Our stuff reminds us of when we were younger or thinner or going out all the time. Or as you say, how much it all cost at the time. Add the souvenirs of trips taken for love or business. The small impulse buys. I have mementos on my library shelves that only my cleaning lady has touched in years - to honour them every month - dust them off and replace in same spots. Why keep? I have items in basement storage with 25 cent stickers on from my garage sale several years ago…If no one wanted to pay that (or even negotiate me down), why do I keep any? Hoping for a different audience next time? Box #4 please.
I dread sudden death (really the only way to go) because of all this debris for my kids to either dump or continue to honour. Do I need a museum? As if legacy is captured in trinkets from experiences only I remember. After all, the children will be gathering their own crap.
Anyway.
You have inspired me to go down to the basement right now and load up some boxes. It is amazing how quickly offerings will disappear from the end of the drive. No delivery required!
I (and my stuff) shall be FREE!
My husband said to me yesterday "If anything happens to us anytime soon. It will take an army to clear out this house." I keep putting it off and putting it off. I can't part with my shoes and I can and do still wear a lot of them. Your Mother sounds like my Mother. "Buy good shoes, never cheap, never buy cheap fashion" Whilst I have more flats, bright white sneakers, and blundstones in my wardrobe these days I still can walk/run in my heels at 60. As a former ballerina, I learned the trick to tape my second and third toes with white medical tape and put a thin piece of cork at the front of your shoes going back to the ball of your foot. That will allow you to wear heels, pain free but I do find myself, with remote work at home and having large gardens and a pool to attend to, that I'm not so much in need of keeping all my designer shoes, I just can't choose which ones I have to purge. Some of them are like pieces of art to me. My 10 pairs of cowboy boots, mostly hand made they will take from my cold, dead, hands