As seen in the previous issue, Seras Bryner is no longer Co-Editor-in-Chief because she’s a “senior” and had to “graduate.” On the bright side, we brought in Evan for the next school year and generation of editors. Speaking of generations of editors, it brings us to the topic at hand today. While there are many different kinds of people that have been in the role of Editor-in-Chief, one string that keeps us all connected is our love for shopping! It’s hard to have money for shopping in general – so a great alternative is going secondhand shopping or thrifting! If you’ve been keeping up with Hawkeye, you’ll know that we’ve had multiple different mentions of thrifting both in standard articles and our fashion catalog, the Hawk Couture.
Personally, I think thrifting is an amazing alternative due to the fact that most of my clothes are thrifted – including my prom dress (which I’d like to brag about because I only spent $30 on it!)
On our first day in Kansas City for Nationals back in April, we decided to take a trip to Arizona Trading Co. – one of the local thrift stores. Throughout the thrifting trip, a few of our HSM members stopped to give each other seemingly endless amounts of clothes that might suit them, except nobody could figure out what Evan would’ve wanted.
In my extremely unprofessional opinion, thrifting is one of my favorite things to do in my free time. But I must say, Evan’s outfit choices when on his thrift trips are significantly better than mine. I can assume that his iconic outfit is held dear to him, as he’s worn it almost weekly since we returned from the midwest. Now you may be asking – what was he thinking when choosing this ridiculous but magnificent outfit? I couldn’t tell you. He can, though!
Before I went to Kansas City for a school trip, I had never gone thrifting before. To be completely honest, I didn’t fully understand what thrifting was or what the point of it was. However, I agreed to go thrifting, not out of curiosity, but mainly due to the fact that the majority of my friends were also going thrifting.
The thrift shop we chose was just a short streetcar away, but a few blocks away from our hotel. In typical Kansas City fashion, it was surrounded by a sea of parking lots, despite being close to the downtown core. When I entered, I honestly didn’t know what to expect; for the first few minutes I kind of just wandered, generally sticking close to Efrata. I didn’t see much that I liked among the selection available, adding to my skepticism.
As people slowly picked out the articles of clothing they wanted, I was still unable to find anything that spoke to me. As we got closer to leaving, I thought that my first thrifting trip would end in failure. But then I saw a shirt. Bright pink in color, it was dotted with flamingos and a tropical pattern.
Some of you have probably even seen me around the school wearing it. However, that was only the beginning. A shirt is only one small part of a successful outfit: one is not complete without some article of legwear, and most importantly, a hat. I was able to quickly find a pair of shorts to add to the outfit. They seemed to be about the cheapest pair of cargo shorts that one could find – as soon as I tried them on, one of the buttons fell off. But they really fit with the shirt, so I added them to my cart. I was now halfway to looking like a Miami tourist. Now, I needed to put the finishing touches on the outfit. On the wall there were a couple of racks full of hats, but only one could truly complete the outfit. When I saw it, I knew it was the one. It was a faded lime green, contrasting (but not clashing with) the beautiful, Hawaiian shirt. Now, after trying the outfit on, I knew it was the one. I went to checkout, feeling like I had spent the best $28 of my life, getting out an outfit from this journey that I now wear almost weekly.
