The official thrift/discount store bragging thread - Page 2022

I'm an LA native an I've never seen anywhere near the amount of stuff dark matter has shown in any one single store. That being said here are some recent LA finds.

GW on Beverly, besides Cantor's: Tom Ford tie
GW in Santa Monica, two charvet, and two Turnbull Asser shirts
GW in Culver, Chan MTM suit
GW on LaBrea, two hand tailored Brooks Brothers suits, HF Suit.

There is good stuff here, but it is rarely in one place unless someone just dropped off a big load of clothes at one GW.

I think he said in another post he has 7+ shops he hits on rotation.  You two should hook up to coordinate efforts. 
 

 

Say, has anyone thrifted like a giant designer safety pin, or maybe one of those coat-hook thingies I could use to fasten a linen SC? I'm forced to admit my favorite thrifted jackets are just too big; my only chance now might be to pop the collars, Asian villain -style, and fasten by the throat.

darmatter, surely you've found one in steezy CA?

Also, why is there no weepy icon!

Why the hell did eBay do away with the option where you could send the payment reminder? Now you have to send another invoice, which is what I do. Keep sending the invoices...what are they going to do? They are the one that didn't pay.

Pix of your gf Darkmatter or she didn't happen

+1

Following up on an earlier discussion, the results of an experiment: A few weeks ago I picked up five otherwise pristine jantzen tailor shirts, french cuffed, in my size. Except, monogrammed on the cuffs. I then tried to remove them with a stitch puller. Also, I bought a shirt new at LL Bean, an orange gingham on last clearance, less than $10 -- and while all the others in the section had pocket monograms, this one didn't (me, sucka, didn't check cuffs. There was one down there, ugh).

Thought this would work out, reading the 8-10 threads on this topic at SF and chitchatting with some of youse back channel. There was no definitive answer as to whether this can be done satisfactorily. Some were interested in an update after I was done.

Key diff in the Jantzen and LL Bean shirts for discussion purposes: The Jantzen Tailor shirts were monogrammed and then the cuff assembled; LL Bean shirt mongrammed after (through both sides of cuff).

I tried removing both types of monograms. Fail. I destroyed the cuff on LL Bean shirt (or it was destroyed in the process of monogramming); it was damaged and ripped. Great shirt, though! Tailor converted it to a nice bright short-sleever, am happy.

On the Jantzens, soon I realized the commercial embroidery was too dense for my little hand tool (and there was fusible on the inside of the cuff cementing it all together, so even when I pulled a stitch, removing the thread was problematic).

My tailor took the cuffs apart and did his best. Couldn't flip the cuffs because they are asymmetrical on the inside, and the fusible that held the monogram left a mark. Shadows remain of the letters, less noticeable on the patterned cuffs or where the letters were thin script (as opposed to block letters). These pix are after a wash and clothes brush treatment. Nataku remarked earlier that marks like these sometimes can improve after more washings, I think?







Overall experience: Fail. I will wear the Jantzen shirts for a while, I'm guessing few people will actually stare at my cuffs and notice, but still, it's not good. Safe to say I won't be effing around with monograms again. I don't recommend it. I spent a grand total of about $13 per shirt, which is about nothing compared to original retail...but still, for the privilege of this imperfection -- my money could have been better spent elsewhere. Ultimately, I will probably not be able to tolerate these imperfections and give up wearing them.

The "convert to short sleeve" trick is actually cool. I had never thought of that myself until reading about other SF poster cuff monogram removal fails. Duh. Probably will rethrift the french cuffed shirts instead of short-sleeving them, though.
Edited by LooknGr8 - 3/31/12 at 8:14am

Plus, who cares if he thrifted or not. If he's buying retail or paying through the nose at high end consignment shops, it doesn't hurt us. Whoo! King of the thrifting thread by deception! It's not like we're giving out cash prizes or anything.

Give him some credit. We all know how much gar-baaaaaage (French pronunciation) we have to go through to get one or two decent things; I'm imagining DarkMatter's got ridiculous amounts of time invested in thrifting between those awesome posts.

+2 - there are no girls on the internet!

I agree - wherever he's getting the stuff, it's his business. I'm sure some of it is from consignment but we've discussed that before - paying $100 for an Isaia suit is still a no-brainer, for example. And he's said more than once that thrifting is taking up way too much of his time and his GF hates how much time it takes... so that does sound to me like he's slamming the racks at lots of stores on a daily basis. Really, that's the "secret to thrifting" no matter where you live - it's just that in some areas you get DM7-style finds and in some areas you get, well, excited at seeing a pair of Bill's Khakis.

Oh, and I have a proxy offer: There's a recent BB made in USA suit available in a thrift nearby - not an 1818 line, not a Brooksease. Just a BB mainline, but recent gold-script-BB with gold-stitching-around-it label. Untagged for size, but I measured pit to pit as approximately 23-23.5 so probably something like a 44ish. It was either solid navy or navy with a pinstripe, I honestly can't remember. It was $50 so I left it as too risky to flip, but if anyone is interested I can snag it for you at cost+ship.

FTFY....that's the only thing that works for my wife. She hasn't complained once, since I bought the Jamaican Cruise tickets with the ebay money. 5 weeks til bon voyage. 
 

 

A safety pin, man. A designer safety pin...

Be careful in Jamaica! I was on a cruise a few weeks ago and ended up getting ten stitches in a Jamaican hospital! Lol word of advice: always go back to the ships doctor! Lol

James

yeah, but homer's point was good too. along with the suit and the sport coat he bought - i sent a NWT pair of Barneys socks, an ETRO tie I don't wear, and a Joseph Abboud shirt I can't give away on ebay. Hopefully that's enough to sway negative feedback. It's about all I can do.

The only Bill's Khakis I've seen are ones I've swapped from you guys. And I've slammed waaaaaaay more racks than my family thinks is intelligent.

Picked up a vintage Tissot Seastar automatic dive watch at the thrift this morning. Hands don't seem to want to move, but for $10 I thought I'd take a flyer and see if my watch guy can get it running again. Looks like this one.

Heard back from both parties involved, so I'm going to go ahead and tell that story for you guys. It might not compare with winning the Mega Millions, but I think the odds are pretty close!

Back in December, I saw a post from Shiny that he left a Brioni suit and Kiton pants for a larger guy at a thrift. Of course, being a larger guy, I immediately PM'd him asking if he'd mind picking them up. He was more than happy to take a look, but of course, the thrift gods being fickle, when he returned a few days later the suit was gone... but the Kiton pants were still there! Imagine that - Kiton pants just hanging out for awhile!

Shiny was kind enough to send me photos from the store and make sure I wanted them even with a couple of minor flaws (a bar tack on a pocket needed to be resewn, and the fly button flap needed reinforcing). He was then generous enough to send the pants along at cost+shipping+a small proxy fee.

I got the pants, they fit better than I'm comfortable acknowledging in public... and I put them on my "to mend" pile. Don't hate, you know you have one too!

Fast forward to early March... and I get a PM from toscano_adottato that he has a Kiton sport coat for a larger guy that he tried to sell, even listed it up on Ebay and didn't sell. He was kind enough to send the coat along in trade just in consideration of future finds... my jaw dropped, put it that way.

The coat arrived this past week; and as you've probably guessed... they match the pants! It's a reunited suit! Orphans found separately over a good period of time by two guys who both happened to be SF members who both happened to deal with me and the coat happened to not sell on Ebay? Pretty amazing in my book.

Some of you may remember a long time ago two guys reunited a RLPL suit they'd each thrifted part of locally... take that, throw in the Internet, and it's still happening!

It's a Kiton Super 150's suit - unvented with pleated pants, but you can't have it all - tagged Italian 66, which is about a US 52 (via a couple of conversion methods) fits huge on me (usually a US 48-50) - going to see what kind of magic the tailor can work. It was sold from Saks (with their label that looks like this: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.luxist.com/media/2011/01/gyi0056905545.jpg ) so I gather it isn't super-recent, which would have the script label, but I had no idea Saks actually sold Kiton. I almost didn't believe it was really a match till I compared the size tags & the style of Kiton tag from the pants and jacket.

I really appreciate the kindness of both Shiny and toscano_adottato, and am trying to pay them both back in kind - I just mailed Toscano a NWOT recent Oxxford suit.

And because this story is useless without pics... here you go:

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