I buy used clothes for one primary reason: I enjoy the hunt. (There is a secondary reason, which is that except at the most stratospheric prices, cashmere quality now is not what it was.) I take pleasure in breathing new life into something beautiful that for whatever reason didn't fit into someone else's life any more. I guess everybody draws lines and they're all arbitrary beyond not wanting to wear someone else's underwear. I don't ever buy used shoes, not for the germ rationale that others use, but simply because fine shoes, more than anything else in one's wardrobe, seem to take on the unique attributes of the wearer in terms of anatomical irregularities, and so on. While the hand-stitching of a good coat in the chest, collar, and shoulders will mold itself to a new wearer pretty quickly, I don't think that leather, cork, and whatever compressed by gravity will do the same. I may well be wrong, and silly for excluding this valuable resource. Mostly, I've bought used cashmere sweaters and sportcoats, with a few suits thrown in for good measure. I will consider used shirts if they're special and look nearly new, but shirts wear out fairly quickly. It has nothing to do with finances for me, to some extent, though my wardrobe would certainly be less without the influx of interesting vintage items. My sweater collection would be a third or less of its current size, in particular. Also, I don't think that it's a myth that men will buy very nice clothing and seldom wear it before tossing it aside. The typical man who wears T&A shirts, for instance, probably doesn't just own ten or twenty shirts. It is probably fifty or more. Maybe a lot more. If that person gains twenty pounds in five years, those shirts are lightly-worn thrift store fodder.
