Closet Sales are Just Parties Now
Speculating our ever-increasingly circular economy isn’t all that fascinates me. When it comes to closet sales, I’m intrigued by how something so innocuous can easily turn into yet another social game. Of course, that’s the nature of any business. Every other weekend now, there’s a vintage designer sale happening somewhere with a roster of carefully considered names, where the sellers are a higher selling point than the designers themselves. Maybe it alludes to the superstitions we subconsciously hold about secondhand clothes holding the energy of their owners. You’re not just going home with someone’s $10 Paloma Wool cardigan, but some of their whole vibe. Or, maybe it’s something else we’re confronted with by the end of the day… that your taste is in fact, someone else’s taste.
In the same way that “magazines are all just parties now” (to quote another tweet from writer Kyle Chayka, who, relatably, wrote a book about algorithms turning taste into consumerism) — closet sales, too, are just parties now. The one that I’d organized at Montez Press Radio two weekends ago could have been considered just that, with nearly 20 vendors who came to be a part of it, all people whose taste I admire: writers, artists, publishers, art directors, designers, stylists, models, European vintage sellers, ultra-luxury resellers (I had, since that weekend, learned about Madison Ave, and a whole different type of social game in the realm of resale culture, apparently…)
