To celebrate this anniversary, I’m adding a new perk for paid subscribers, something I haven’t done since I started my newsletter!

I’m going to start doing monthly live calls.

The community we’ve all built in the chat is so delightful that I want to continue the conversation in person via Substack live. Every month, I’ll ask for volunteers from paid subscribers and will draw one name to have a styling session with me. So many of the frustrations with our wardrobes are universal, so we’ll do it on live and the rest of the paid subscribers will be invited to show up and learn as they follow along!

In the call, we'll focus on one topic that has been a stumbling block for the “client” — it could be defining their style, letting go of clothes that no longer fit, brand suggestions and shopping, fit, capsule wardrobe creation, or mindset and body image.

On top of that, I’m doing an anniversary sale today! You’ll get access to these monthly live calls and all the other perks of the paid tier for just $3.75 a month instead of the monthly subscription price of $6.00. The sale applies only to annual subscriptions and you’ll keep that discounted rate forever — no future auto-renewing at a higher price. This discount is only good until Sunday night!

Get 25% off forever

On to the income discussion.

Recently, there was a big hubbub about an article in The Cut in which a fashion Substacker shared that she made $275,000 per year. People were either incensed by the person commodifying their audience to make big money or by the idea of people being incensed at a woman making big money.

As usual, my take is in the grey area. I abhor business models that depend on overconsumption (half of this Substacker’s income was subscriptions and half was brand partnerships), and also, my day job is as a stylist who helps people find the right items to buy (among a host of other things they hopefully take from our work together).

My clients pay me for this service, but if I share other items I find with the public, I do believe I should be paid (typically via affiliate linking, when I share a link that might earn me a commission, but just know that at least half of the items I share are small brands that don’t have affiliate links) for the labor and knowledge it took to find them.

I’ve always tried to balance deinfluncing consumption and sharing things I genuinely recommend. It’s impossible for money not to be an influencing factor which is why I’ve never done sponsored content and have rarely taken gifted products (among the tempting offers currently in my Instagram DM’s are mushroom coffee and socks 🤣, but a few of the more substantial gifts have been Universal Standard clothes and rentals from Rent The Runway).

I’ve only accepted gifts that are things I’ll actually use, wear, or recommend to my clients. Hopefully, this means that when I recommend a product, you all trust that I do, in fact, think it could be helpful to you, and I’m not sharing it just to make money. By the way, I’m not sharing this to get a pat on the back, just to try to explain my thought process around it.

As part of my yearly anniversary reflection, I wanted to add my more nuanced and, shall we say, less financially successful perspective on being a fashion Substacker. In fact, since this post last year, my Substack growth has been 0% and my income has been cut in half.

Read on to see:

• How much I spent subscribing to other people’s Substacks!

• How many different streams of income I have

• How much of my income they make up

• How much I made in affiliate income and subscriptions

• What effect finally treating my chronic illness has had on my income

• How I’ve fit book writing into my schedule and income streams

Of course, I’m putting this info behind a paywall both because it’s sensitive information and (transparently) because I typically get a big boost in subscribers on these annual posts. Again, if you subscribe during my anniversary sale, you’ll get a 25% discount on a yearly subscription forever.

Get 25% off forever

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You can DIY this or have a tailor do it:

The reverse is also true, you can have elastic or fabric added to make the waistband larger.

@closet__helperLarge Your Waistband the Easy Way!👖✨ I DIY Alteration Tips" Hashtags：#SewingHacks #WaistbandFix #DIYAlterations #SewingTutorial #FashionHacks #EasySewing #SewingMadeSimple #SewingKit #TailoringTips #SewingForBeginners #UpcyclingClothes #DIYFashion #AlterYourJeans #SewingLife

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However, not all of us are blessed with the sewing gene, so lately, I’ve made it my mission to find ready-to-wear options.

As always, a note on these links: many of them are from fast fashion brands and wouldn’t be considered ethical fashion brands by any means. I included those for three reasons:

1. Often, these are the only brands that carry a wide range of sizes.

2. I will always prioritize your mental health, and if you need clothes for a changing body quickly, or your body is changing multiple times, and you’re having to buy new clothes often, these are good options.

3. Not everyone has the financial privilege to spend more on ethically made items. FYI, some of these links are affiliate links and might earn me a small commission if you purchase something through them.

Lastly, I never want to influence you to buy something you hadn’t thought you needed before reading this. Think about what’s on your shopping list and do your best to be thoughtful about what would add to your life and what would take away before you buy.

There are also many ways to build your wardrobe on a tight budget, and I’ve linked to articles below for some ideas.

Access to my links is a paid subscriber benefit. As a paid subscriber, in addition to supporting the hours per week I spend on this newsletter and the ability to see these shopping links, you also get the ability to comment (we have an incredible community here) on regular posts, access to style story guests’ recommendations, access to three years worth of archived posts, and the ability to submit questions for my AMA (ask me anything) posts.

I’m going to start my 3rd Substack anniversary sale early, so enjoy 25% off forever if you subscribe yearly!

Get 25% off forever

Here are the options I’ve found, from L to R:

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The Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 changed everything about getting dressed to work from home. We were all scared and in need of comfort and one of the places we tried to get it was from our clothes. Working in comfy clothes became normal and many of us (especially women) vowed never to go back to uncomfortable clothes.

Six years later, that feeling has dissipated a bit and some of us are wanting more fun, variety, and self-expression in our clothes.

As you can see, many of the items in the image above are rented. If you’d like to try one of these services and want to use my affiliate links, you can go here for Rent the Runway and use code RTRXDGILLESPIE for a discount, and here for Nuuly.

However, there’s real tension between wanting to express ourselves and the level of effort it might require. I’ve thought about this for a long time but the effort just didn’t feel worth it. For years, due to parenthood, depression, or chronic illness, I didn’t have the extra energy. I actually feel self conscious in front of the other people in my home if I make too much of an effort. I know I might get a comment like “ooh, you’re dressed up!” which is of course, well-intended and totally innocuous but still not something I want to invite (note: my advice to clients is to push through knowing that after a couple of occasions people will stop commenting – in this case, I warned my partner ahead of time 😂).

Also, why make an effort if no one (else) will see you? Is getting dressed something we do entirely for ourselves, or is there a social component as well? Maybe I want my outfit to be seen—or even appreciated. But if you rarely leave your house, what then?

As I mentioned, lately I have had the energy and a strong pull to put together outfits intentionally. Also, if I’m not going to wear the fun and interesting items I love hunting down, then there was certainly no purpose in buying them. To borrow from Marie Kondo, these items want to fulfill their purpose, to be useful. I wanted to see if I could find a middle ground between zero effort and effort that’s draining.

I decided to get intentionally dressed for three weeks (I’m using the phrase “intentionally dressed” instead of just “dressed” because we’re always dressed, except when, you know, we’re not…)

Spoiler alert: making the effort was worth it for me.

Here’s what I discovered and how I made it work:

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Trying to figure out sizing and having one shot to get it right made the process a little stressful. Even though I didn’t use it often, I would encourage clients to rent clothes for special events rather than buy a four-hundred-dollar dress they’d wear once.

Side note: why are we okay with spending so much on a one-time-use item but not on something we’d wear multiple times a week?

@mindfulclosetI told y’all I would have to try @nuuly to test out a more size inclusive clothing rental service! Here’s my first shipment with some pros and cons. Full debriefing today on Substack. Disclosure: nuuly gifted me a month of their service and I get a gift card for posting #cluubnuuly #nuulypartner #nuuly

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When clothing rental services began to proliferate and to rent out clothing for daily wear and longer periods of time, clients would ask whether it was something they should try. If it’s within someone’s budget, I think it’s a great idea for several reasons:

• If you don’t know your style, you can experiment with all different kinds of styles and really test how you’d feel in that style out in the world

• If you’re in a period where your size is fluctuating rapidly, you can rent instead of buying clothes in every size.

• If you’re in an industry where it’s important to keep up appearances, you can rent at a lower price than purchasing an entire high-end wardrobe.

• In general, more people wearing the same item is a sustainable way of getting dressed.

The only aspect I don’t love is that by renting clothes, it can appear to others that you have a new wardrobe every two weeks, perpetuating the idea that we should have new clothes all the time.

A few months ago, Rent the Runway reached out to me and offered me two free months of their service.

Honestly, it sounded fun, so I agreed. Since Rent the Runway isn’t size inclusive, I reached out to Nuuly, and they gave me a free month as well.

As an affiliate for both of these programs, here’s what I receive: from Rent the Runway, I received 3 months of the service for free and I receive a commission of $15-30 if someone signs up using my info. From Nuuly, I received one month of service and I receive Nuuly gift cards from $50-$200 depending on how many times I post on social media.

If you’d like to try one of these services and want to use my affiliate links, you can go here for Rent the Runway and use code RTRXDGILLESPIE for a discount making your first month $65 for 5 items, and here for Nuuly (unfortunately, they didn’t give me a discount code — one month is $98 for six items).

I don’t want to do too deep a dive into the logistics, because there are already plenty of reviews out there, but here are the pros and cons for the two services I tried (and the 5 items I ended up purchasing after renting):

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For $150/year, you get access to this thread where I’ll suggest items for you based on your request, access to 3 of my online mini-courses, my spreadsheet of over 250 retailers (Virginia Sole-Smith called it “gold”), and all the regular paid subscribers’ perks like the ability to comment and to see my monthly shopping picks. You’d also be helping me sustain this newsletter, pay contributors, and donate a portion of my earnings to Jamaa Birth Village, an organization providing culturally-congruent traditional Midwifery care for Saint Louis area families.

Let’s get into it!

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This went on for years before I realized I didn’t actually want to wear most of what I was buying. I was just dazzled by brand names, low prices, or how unique something felt. I sold vintage clothes on eBay for a while, but that didn’t make much of a dent in what I’d accumulated. I not only had a closet full of clothes, but also two racks in my basement. Eventually, I went through everything and gave most of it away. I still went just as often, but I bought far less. Defining my style helped a lot. I had to accept that a lot of great things could exist without coming home with me.

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@mnk171Work from home ootd 💃🏾 #ootd

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I discovered Mbiye through TikTok where I was drawn in by both her colorful style and her insightful takes on everything from women being financially dependent on men to the gig economy. Her style is obviously delightful, but even more than that, she seems to have an enviable sense of “bien dans sa peau” (a term I first learned with ’s style story), or feeling good in her own skin. You’re going to love this one — enjoy!

Note: this post is delightfully image heavy, so if you’re reading in your email, make sure to click through to finish the article and give it a like while you’re here.

Q: Introduce yourself, your pronouns, your work, and how you spend your time.

A: My name is Mbiye Kasonga, she/her/hers. I’m a writer and producer currently living in Washington DC. I own and operate a podcast production agency that I founded two years ago called Moyo. When I’m not working, I love to read, knit, and brunch.

Q: What was your style like when you were a child?

A: I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to the US in elementary school. I love looking back on photos of myself as a kid, because I really believe my style has remained the same. I loved bright colors and patterns, and I LOVED dresses. There’s a great photo of me as a toddler wearing a striped sweater and skirt, leaning back on a door, clearly feeling myself. I’d wear every single thing I had on in that photo today, and I love putting that photo up against some of my “grown up” outfits because I can see the throughline in my fashion sense so clearly.

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Q: Growing up, what messages were you given about what you should or shouldn’t wear (and from whom or where do you think those messages came)?

A: I’ve always been curvy, and specifically, I’ve always had a big butt. I find it so funny that we’re in the BBL era, where women of all races are trying to get bigger butts. I remember being asked “why I was sticking my butt out” as a kid, and being told by my Aunt that I couldn’t wear certain things because of the shape of my body. I learned early on that I couldn’t wear things that other little girls wore, and it was encoded in me early that my body was inherently seductive. That theme carried on as I got older; I can recall my boss at an internship telling me I was dressed inappropriately and that I would distract people when I wore a long-sleeved, knee-length dress.

Q: How has your style evolved since you were younger and what phases have you gone through with your style (i.e. high school grunge phase, early working days business casual phase, etc)?

A: From 16-20, I went through a pretty obsessive prep phase. I grew up in Virginia, the land of Lily Pulitzer dresses and Jack Rogers sandals, so preppy style was in the water. When I got my first retail job, I immediately started spending my meagre earnings on collared shirts, patterned loafers, and sterling silver signet rings.

Indie sleaze was all the rage through my college years, and I completely embraced it. Every outfit needed a choker. These rock-stud-inspired ankle boots were my favorite pair of shoes. My favorite accessory was a matte burgundy lipstick. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Fast fashion was my lifeblood as a young woman. I don’t know if this phase has a neat name, but I feel like we all go through a few years of trying to figure out what we want to look like, and fast fashion makes it easy to cycle through trends. My fast fashion era included Zara leather jackets that neither insulated my body nor shielded me from the wind, bodycon dresses from Forever 21 that fell apart at the seams, and bodysuits from Urban Outfitters.

Q: How have external pressures to conform to the ideal standard of beauty and the thought of how others view you affected your style?

A: Beauty standards definitely stopped me from wearing crop tops in early undergrad, when I was hung up on the idea that my stomach wasn’t flat enough. Thankfully, since then, I’ve cared less and less about my body not looking “right” with each passing year. Being more accepting of my body has made fashion more fun for me; once I stopped preemptively excluding myself from certain cuts or silhouettes, I started experimenting more and dialling in on what I actually liked, not just what I thought was flattering.

Choice Cuts

Instagram Isn't Your High School

During the season finale of TikTok (part 1), when American users of the app began to realize that the app would actually be shutting down, a peculiar thing happened. Users started anticipating what would come after TikTok: would it be lemon8, the ByteDance-owned app that’s been pushed on TikTok users, or RedNote, the Chinese short-form video app that Ti…

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a year ago · 33 likes · 2 comments · Mbiye Kasonga

Q: How have your sense of style and shopping habits shifted along with changes in your body?

A: My body has changed so much over the course of my 20s. When I started college, I was a size 4 and wore an A cup. By the time I graduated, I was a size 8 and wore a C.

Just as I was getting used to my new body and adult life, the pandemic began. Over the next two years, I gained 50 pounds and had to work harder than ever to dress myself. Gaining weight forced me to break free from the cycle of buying fast fashion. My body needed clothes that could actually hold up, clothes that could grow or shrink with me as needed. The fast fashion wardrobe I had spent my early 20s accumulating no longer served me, so I had to start from scratch. I sought out sample sales and started studying the clothes I was buying more carefully. Putting on pieces from brands like Mara Hoffman felt so different from my usual Zara purchases; the quality gap was hard to ignore. Gaining weight made me realize that we ask way too much of our bodies and not enough of our clothes. Now, I shop with an eye toward what can grow with me, not just what looks good right now.

Choice Cuts

What Are We Doing Here?

In Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, she expounds on the importance of gathering with purpose. She states, “having a purpose simply means knowing why you’re gathering and doing your participants the honor of being convened for a reason.” When I read this quote for the first time, I finally understood why wedding officiants always start ceremonies by …

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4 months ago · 16 likes · 4 comments · Mbiye Kasonga

Q: What barriers do you encounter in trying to express your style? Are there any situations or spaces you feel your style prohibits you from accessing or gives you better access to?

A: Since I now work for myself full-time, I really don’t feel restricted in what I wear. Prior to this, I worked in a consulting firm, and before that, I was in business school, so I spent a lot of time trying to feel comfortable in work dresses and non-offensive, smart casual outfits. Business clothes just don’t feel like “me.” Now I wear whatever I want to work from home. I spend about half the week in PJs, either long swishy free people pants + tanks or a pant set from Aerie. The other half of the week, I’ll actually put on an outfit. I tend to rotate between Doen dresses (the brand has gifted me many times over, I have never purchased with my own money), a t-shirt + jeans (Levi’s, Free People, Everlane), or something from the vast collection of dresses I actually *have* spent money on.

Q: Do you have any style icons? Who are they?

I don’t spend a TON of time on Pinterest, but when I do, I find myself pinning outfits from the same three people over and over again:

Chrissy Rutherford, Telsha Anderson, and Lindsay Peoples.

Chrissy is a mainstay for me. I love how she pulls together outfits that feel slick and essential, but not minimal. She repeats outfits a lot, which gives me lots of inspiration for styling things in different ways. Telsha has so much fun with her clothes, I look to her for examples of how to be more daring while staying unfussy/fun. Lindsay’s street style photos from fashion month are always killer. She’s editor in chief of The Cut and always at some fabulous party, so I love looking to her for event dressing.

Q: How would you define your current relationship to clothes and style?

A: I am more in love with fashion than ever, mostly because I know exactly what I like (comfortable, colorful, whimsical clothes) and what I don’t (stiff, colorless, normative clothes). I’ve also started knitting, which gives me total creative control over my clothes. I finished my first garment earlier this year and I’m excited to make more.

@mnk171Shoutout to @una for the knitting pattern :) #knitting #finishedobject

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Q: What makes your style authentic to who you are today?

A: I give myself full permission to lean into the clothes I love. I’ve always liked dresses, and I have a million of them, I’ve always gravitated toward color, and now I let myself color block/wear a ton of color without a second thought. In the Congo, there was so much color and we really aren’t afraid of prints at all, I think fashion-wise I’m really just going back to my roots.

Q: Do you wear anything that’s conventionally considered unflattering?

A: Horizontal stripes, denim cutoffs on thick thighs, clogs, and my afro.

Thanks so much, Mbiye! I absolutely love how clearly connected to your childhood style you are. It’s something I think is helpful for everyone to reflect on! Also, I know many of us have had that fast fashion period that we’re not proud of, I certainly did.

Go follow Mbiye on Instagram and TikTok, and subscribe to her newsletter, Choice Cuts.

P.S. You can read the style stories archives here, with stories from icons like , , and .

A little extra tidbit for paid subscribers:

Q: Just for fun, what are 3 things in your wardrobe you’d recommend to others (could be a specific item from a specific brand or just a type of item you find useful)?

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Here are a few of the things I look for:

1. Fabric feel. This is the most important thing, and unfortunately, it probably rules out the majority of the items you’ll find in a thrift store these days. A nice quality fabric will feel softer, smoother, and more durable.

2. Fabric content. If the fabric feels OK to you, but you’re still wondering whether it’s a synthetic, check the fabric content on the label inside the seam. If it’s a natural fiber, such as wool, cotton, linen, or silk, congrats, you’ve hit the thrift lottery! With the proliferation of fast fashion over the last 20 years, more and more of what ends up in thrift stores is made of fully synthetic fabrics. These days, you’re lucky even if you find something that has a natural fiber blend blended with some other synthetic fabrics.

3. Stitching. A well-made garment will have stitching that is straight and the stitches will be smaller and closer together. Good quality thread is expensive and lower quality garments will have lower quality thread and less of it.

I’ve included garment photos below so you can actually see what to look for in the wild.

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That definitely goes for shoes, as I only have three pairs of thrifted shoes and they’re all of the dressy variety.

I decided on the spur of the moment to do a quick spring flash sale, 25% off an annual subscription — that’s $4 a month. As a paid subscriber you’ll get:

• access to almost 3 years of archived posts like December’s post about the effects of GLP-1’s on body positivity, Jessica Defino’s style story from two years ago, my chronic illness journey, and how I started my shift towards color

• the ability to comment on all posts

• the ability to start a thread in the chat (you do not want to miss our Friday outfit threads)

• the ability to submit questions for Style AMA posts

• my sincere gratitude and the knowledge that your subscription is helping to pay my bills while I work on my book

Get 25% off forever

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Our conversation did cover ThredUp, but also organically touched on chronic illness, body checking, body grief, and impermanence along the way. It’s never just about the clothes.

Here’s an AI-cleaned up transcript.

Dacy:
Okay. We are live. Hello. Hi, Ryan. How are you?

Ryan:
Good. How are you?

Dacy:
I’m good. I’m excited to talk about ThredUP because yeah, like I said in my notes post, I just don’t use it as much as some of the other ones. And I remember back when I was only used to eBay and Poshmark was foreign to me. And now Poshmark is native land and now I want to just get more comfortable with ThredUP. So tell us, how did you kind of land on ThredUP as the one that you ended up using the most?

Ryan:
It’s funny because I’m nodding along and saying that, yeah, we all have these different workflows that end up working for us where before it seems daunting or as you said, unappealing. So the thing about ThredUP that I really appreciate, and I think it also is the reason that I came to your work is that I run a newsletter that’s about parents and caregivers and the things that they need.

Dacy:
Great newsletter. Everyone should read it.

Ryan:
Yeah. And so one of the things that we need is clothes, turns out. And so I had been through a pretty rocky family building journey and it left me with an entirely different body than I had before. And so a lot of us know that we can’t just bounce back to our pre-pregnancy selves, but even like my body was not going back even to my post-pregnancy body because of different things that had happened to me. And so in the past, I had sort of spent time curating, like I described it to you as sort of like a cool girl wardrobe. I used to be a journalist. I wrote about music and food. I had a whole vibe and suddenly I couldn’t wear those things anymore. And they also didn’t really feel like me. So I really needed a complete wardrobe overhaul, but you and I have talked about the fact that we come from backgrounds of activism.

I grew up in a family of environmentalists.

Fashion was not necessarily a huge priority in our house. And so I really was in this bind where I didn’t want to be consumerist, whatever that word means, right? But I needed everything. I needed new pants. I needed new shoes. I needed every season because my entire body had changed and I was really struggling with that. And so I really came to ThredUP around the same time that I came to your work because my background and what I write about a lot is engaged Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, not in a sanctimonious mommy way, but just in a sense of like, “I really want to pay attention to this. I really want to think about this.”

But I wasn’t really clicking with a lot of sort of fashion bloggers out there. And when I came across your work, I was like, yes, I probably even searched for mindful approaches to clothing and the magic of SEO brought me to you. And so I just really appreciated the fact that there was such permission given in your work, both to just buy what you need secondhand if you’re feeling icky about the consumerist aspect of it and also pointing out that the most sustainable clothes that you can wear are the clothes that you actually wear. And so it really gave me a lot of permission to think, okay, if I sort of take the brakes off and just say, “I’m just going to buy whatever I need secondhand and I’m going to allow myself to do that without guilt,” it really opened things up for me.

And the thing about ThredUP that I found really helpful was that as somebody who, I’m a writer, like Sex in the City, Carrie, that’s not a thing. We don’t have money like that. And so what was really kind of cool about it was that I could start by loading up on credits by sending the clothes that no longer fit me. So it was really quite therapeutic to take these clothes and say, “I’m not going back. This is prior version of me. I love her. Sometimes I miss her.” But sort of doing the Marie Kondo thing of like, “Thank you for your service.” I don’t know, American Apparel Top from when I was cute and hot in the early aughts like, “Bye.” Instead, I’m going to be buying some sensible sweaters that I can machine wash because I have a small child.

Dacy:
Yeah. Yeah. So many things. I mean, I think so many people can relate to so much of what you said. And I’m curious, people who are watching, if you drop in the comments, I have two questions for you. One is, do any of you shop ThredUP and do you like it? What do you like about it? And maybe any tips you have for the rest of us, but also how many of us have had those kind of body shifts? I mean, mine has been very gradual over time. And so it was a very gradual kind of like, okay, this season I need some new pants and oh, next year my winter coat doesn’t fit anymore and whatever. But I think so many people, especially with health problems and with trauma, have a more sudden change. And it is so disorienting to have to start from scratch.

And two things, I’m grateful that you were able to give yourself the permission... Because I always say, “What’s the alternative? What are you going to do? Beat yourself up and then wear too small clothes in the meantime.” There is no alternative. And the fact that ThredUP is there and other secondhand sites to provide an alternative to buying an all new wardrobe, which by the way, sometimes is necessary also. I’m grateful for that for you. And I think it’s so funny because it’s so all connected and you and I both know this and talk about this and how everything ... It’s more than the clothes, right? It’s always more than the clothes. And so we get on this call to talk about ThredUP, but I want to ask you a little bit more about body grief and because you had such a ... As the Body Trust organization calls it, you had such a rupture (H/T and at The Center for Body Trust)with your body and a reckoning.

And you mentioned kind of packing those things up and sending them off. And was that a piece of grieving for you?

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It has felt like I’ve been searching for something that I don’t know how to describe or filter for, but that I’ll know when I see it — you know that feeling? And I haven’t been loving much of what I’ve been seeing. I have all the basics I need (except for those unicorn elastic waist barrel jeans — I’ve ordered some to try), and I’m just bored by what I’m seeing.

After the paywall, a peek into my brain and how I shop, other factors leading to my boredom, dressing for WFH, experience with Rent the Runway, and the two designers that have sparked my interest.

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I love the thrifting community on Substack and I thought I’d ask them for their best tips. Since thrifting for plus sizes has historically been harder than for straight sizes, I’m putting those tips right up top. Make sure to read on for tips from , , and more!

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I don’t think it’s uncouth to earn a little money by providing an item to someone who’s specifically looking for it for a drastically lower price than retail. However, a few times when I’ve posted videos about shopping at Goodwill bins and mentioned reselling something, a few people have been disappointed in me for doing so. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it has to do with a feeling that clothing resellers are somehow cheating the system.

I often hear clothing resellers being demonized because they are “taking all the good stuff” from you and me and from people who genuinely can only afford thrifted clothes, and that they’re the reasons thrift stores are pricing their items higher.

But here’s my hot take: resellers are doing us all a service.

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unflattering

the joy of thrifting

Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money. When we bought new clothes (which wasn’t often), they were usually from the sale rack at Sears. As I got older and started buying my own clothes, I still didn’t have a lot of money, but I wanted cool stuff…

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3 years ago · 51 likes · 27 comments · Dacy Gillespie

However, as we get going on Thrift Month™️, I just want to clear up one thing.

There’s a difference between something that’s thrifted and something that’s purchased secondhand.

It might seem a petty distinction to make, and it’s not a huge deal, but the key difference here is in curation. A thrift store takes donations of all kinds and puts them directly in their store. Other than actual trash, very little is sorted or considered. It all goes in the store1. It’s up to the buyer to comb through the random selection to find treasures. This treasure hunting takes time and effort and the ability to see a diamond in the rough and sometimes protective gloves (I’ll share about outlet thrift stores another day).

In contrast, I call secondhand anything that has been previously purchased or worn and has been deliberately chosen to resell. For instance, Plato’s Closet is not a thrift store, it’s a secondhand store. People bring in a pile of clothes to sell and the store chooses which items to buy and put on the racks. Designer consignment stores are the same.2 With secondhand shopping, someone else has done the curation for you.

Based on this distinction, there are no online resale sites that are thrift stores. On sites like eBay, Depop, and Poshmark, someone made a decision to list every item. The sifting through happens before the items get listed online (often at thrift stores). The site ThredUp positioned itself as an online thrift store early in their marketing, but rarely uses that phrase today. Like these other sites, the items sent to them are filtered and sorted and only the “good” stuff is listed (if you’ve ever sent stuff to ThredUp to sell, you know that not all of it is selected). On all of these sites, you can search for a specific item or a specific category of items instead of just seeing what happens to be there that day.

To be clear, there is no moral superiority or bragging rights gained in shopping thrift stores instead of secondhand (and often, people aren’t able to shop in thrift stores because of neurodivergence, ability, or size range. I see y’all). They’re just different. There is also a lot of skill involved in finding treasures on eBay or other sites. And actually, more of my clothes are secondhand than thrifted, since I am often looking for specific items.

But I love how honestly Abbey puts it here:

Let’s be real: when 85% of people thrift because they have to, calling The RealReal or Depop “thrifting” can feel like povertylarping to me. It glosses over the time, effort, grit and ingenuity that actual thrifting demands. So yes, shop online, flip the pages of Poshmark, snag that Grailed find—just don’t call it thrifting (to my face at least) when the word secondhand works just fine.

So, just to recap: thrifted clothing is secondhand, but not everything that’s secondhand was thrifted. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Stay tuned for upcoming articles about how to be able to tell if an item is good quality, tips from other obsessive Substack thrifters, whether you can overconsume thrifted items, and how to plan a thrifting trip with your bestie. Subscribe (for free!) to make sure you get those in your inbox.

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If you find thrifting overwhelming, these are my basic tips:

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I first came across ’s work in 2021, when she was a speaker in an online retreat I participated in offered by The Center for Body Trust (I later went on to become a Body Trust certified provider). That same year, her first book came out, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body. From that book, I just got a vibe that Savala had an appreciation for style. Five years later, I ended up in a Zoom room of Substack writers including Savala and got to connect with her personally. This is a special bonus edition of style stories to celebrate her second book, Good Woman: A Reckoning, which launches TODAY, and was named the Most Anticipated Feminist Book of 2026 by …

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Just sending a little reminder that the enrollment for my group program, Making Space ends tomorrow, March 2nd. I know I’m not supposed to care about sending a bunch of emails, because otherwise not enough people will know about it, but I hate doing it anyway.

In case you were on the fence about signing up, this would be a really good time. Enrollment hasn’t been great for the last few rounds (probably has something to do with my aforementioned distaste for marketing 😬), and I only have 4 people currently signed up. Something clearly needs to be rejiggered and I may not offer it again until I figure that out.

Here are all the details in one place:

• What you’ll get:

  • weekly check-ins and exercises to complete

  • 12+ pre-recorded videos

  • access to an active community hosted on circle.co

  • answers to your specific questions each week in a recorded video. There is no live call you have to attend regularly.

  • however, we do have two optional live calls over the course of the 8 weeks. If you can m…

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unflattering

less is still too much

For years, my New Year’s resolution has been to do less. And every year I’ve failed…

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4 months ago · 136 likes · 76 comments · Dacy Gillespie

I’ve been running this business since 2013. At first, my prices were low and it took a while to build up a client base. Then there were years when I was pregnant or had an infant at home when I didn’t work very much. I’d finally gotten things to a decent place income-wise when the pandemic began.

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It doesn’t feel very feminist to say, but it’s just the truth that I wouldn’t have been able to ride those waves of low income years without being married and relying on my husband’s income (and yes, of course, he’s also benefitted from my labor and particularly from my childbearing and rearing). I’m grateful he has a decent paying job with good healthcare, but he works in the arts in the age of the orange cheeto and we live in a country without many supports for families. It makes us…

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This is style stories, an interview series where I ask guests about their relationship to clothes over the course of their life and how external influences have shaped it. I focus on the ways that women are able to reject societal expectations about what they should wear. Every guest answers the same questions.

A little over a year ago, I decided that doing this whole Substack thing alone was harder than it needed to be. I put out a call for other female Substackers who wanted to join me in a weekly meeting to discuss Substack issues, bounce ideas off of each other, and just generally support each other. answered the call1. Throughout this past year, I’ve discovered that she is a brilliant writer (she wrote a novel!), a kind and calming presence (her therapy clients are lucky to have her!), and a compassionate listener (she used to be a social worker!). Something I already knew about her was that she has incredible style and like me, she loves a secondhand find. She’s the perfect person to kick off a month of thrift themed content, which I’m calling…Thrift Month! (look, coming up with names is hard, ok?)

Q: Introduce yourself, your pronouns, your work, and how you spend your time.

A: I’m Eleanor, my pronouns are she/her, and I work as a therapist. Outside of my work, you can find me quilting (competently), crocheting (not competently!), reading, writing, cooking, and hanging out with my friends, my neighbors, and my dog.

Q: What was your style like when you were a child?

A: I actually had such a wonderful conversation about this with a group of people recently, so I’m glad you asked! (Likely will turn into a post at some point…) I had some quirks that I think were likely undiagnosed sensory issues that shaped my wardrobe…for a while, I would only wear shorts if I put three marbles in each pocket to weigh down the side seams so they wouldn’t rub against each other. But in general, I loved overalls, bright colors, florals, layering—not so different from where I’ve landed in terms of style now! (Also had a period when I wore two different colored socks rather than a matching pair.) And it was always a big deal (and I think a form of comfort and control) to pick out my outfit for the first day of school, even as early as kindergarten.

Q: Growing up, what messages were you given about what you should or shouldn’t wear (and from whom or where do you think those messages came)?

A: I was lucky I didn’t get much of this kind of messaging! I had very permissive and encouraging parents (hence the different colored socks). When I was in fourth grade, my public elementary school floated the idea of a uniform, and my parents were part of the group that pushed back vocally against it, resulting in a memorable PTA meeting where a neighborhood dad expressed his indignation with my mom for “letting her child run around in dungarees all the time!”

(More on Eleanor’s thoughts on uniforms here.)

Rabbit Fur Coat

what I wore 039

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4 months ago · 43 likes · 5 comments · Eleanor

I think it was more the messaging from my middle school peers that led me to wear things I didn’t even want or was particularly happy to wear. Working in a middle school as an adult has given me a lot of empathy for my teenage self.

Q: How has your style evolved since you were younger and what phases have you gone through with your style (i.e. high school grunge phase, early working days business casual phase, etc)?

A: I started thrifting regularly in high school, and much of my wardrobe was shaped by what I found at the thrift store, which, at the time, was a lot of shirtdresses, patchwork leather, and white pumps with crumbling, dry-rotted heels. I have so much fondness for that version of Eleanor!

I spent several years of my post-college, pre-grad-school life working in an office, and I miss it from time to time. I know I would have so much fun getting dressed for an office job these days. I think I also used to dress more femininely than I do now. At the time, it felt very authentic to me, but as I've gotten older, I feel less connected to many of the dresses and silhouettes I once loved.

Q: Have external pressures to conform to the ideal standard of beauty and the thought of how others view you affected your style?

A: Yes, of course; I am a woman living in the world, after all! But two things that have helped: living in New York City means nobody cares what you wear (truly!), because someone else is always wearing something crazier, newer, more expensive. It would be hard for me to wear anything from my closet and turn heads when I get on the subway and I love that. Getting older has also helped. I feel so much more comfortable and secure in my own skin than I did ten or fifteen years ago.

Q: How have your sense of style and shopping habits shifted along with changes in your body?

A: At this point in my life, I haven’t experienced many drastic fluctuations in weight or changes in ability. I expect this will change with aging and hormonal shifts! However, once I found a denim style I liked, I bought it in several sizes (all secondhand). Now I rotate between the sizes based on how I’m feeling that day and how I want my clothes to fit.

Q: What barriers do you encounter in trying to express your style? Are there any situations or spaces you feel your style prohibits you from accessing or gives you better access to?

A: The main barriers I’ve encountered have been a lack of funds and a lack of regular exposure to coworkers after moving from a shared office to working from home solo. Both of those barriers have forced me to adapt and be more creative. Money constraints mean that I go thrifting whenever I’m visiting my parents (I’m from Florida, a thrift store mecca) and shop primarily secondhand; a lack of coworkers was probably part of the reason I started my newsletter! No coworkers to see my outfits on a regular basis? Now there are a couple thousand of you that I can subject to regular outfit posts!

In terms of access, having a body that fits into straight-size clothing has definitely benefited me. There is more for me to choose from when thrifting; and while eBay, Poshmark, and Depop are great sources for plus-size clothing, they’re not as good for browsing as they are for targeted searches. It takes work to look for secondhand clothing, and that amount of work is compounded and the selection more limited when you are looking for plus-size clothing. While I enjoy the hunt, I know that a lot of people don’t—or don’t have the time for it! (If that’s you, please let me know if I can look for anything on your behalf!)

Q: Do you have any style icons? Who are they?

A: Truly, everyone I have befriended on Substack. I’ve gotten so many ideas from all of you! But there are several people I’ve never met who at first glance don’t seem to have anything to do with my own style but have all made an indelible imprint on me: Maria from The Sound of Music, Jenny Lewis, Dolly Parton, and Tyrese Haliburton. From Dolly, I’ve taken the permission to be bold and unafraid of a shock of color; from Jenny, how to stay true to your style as you age; and from Tyrese? Based on his tunnel fits, I would love to raid his closet (but I’d probably have to hem any pants by at least a foot!).

Rabbit Fur Coat

the joy of the NBA tunnel fit

The first basketball game I ever watched in full was during March Madness in 2019. The reason for my sudden interest was a bracket challenge that the CEO at my previous job had initiated—on the line was a $250 flight voucher. I’d never been a sports person, but I am unfortunately someone who loves to win, and I spent several hours poring over available …

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2 years ago · 132 likes · 33 comments · Eleanor

Q: How would you define your current relationship to clothes and style?

A: This might seem like an odd comparison at first, but hear me out… when I work with clients who struggle with disordered eating, we talk about how there is no neutral position with food. You can’t abstain from it entirely; you have to have a relationship with it.

Clothing works the same way. There is no true opting out, no way to abstain absolutely. We all have a relationship to what we wear, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. I feel lucky that I’ve been able to harness the background noise about clothing and style that already lives in my brain, in a way that lets me examine it, enjoy it, and recognize its role in every other facet of our lives.

Q: What makes your style authentic to who you are today?

A: 2026 Eleanor is a lot more casual than the Eleanor of a few years ago—partly because I started working from home, and partly because I got a dog around the same time. I’d be happy to dress up more regularly again, but it no longer feels as authentic to me as it once did. What does feel authentic now is comfort. If something is not comfortable, I will not wear it! An authentic outfit to me is one I can wear all day without thinking about it.

Q: Do you wear anything that’s conventionally considered unflattering?

A: Absolutely—I’ve always loved an oversized silhouette, and I think barrel leg jeans are a pretty divisive trend that I am all in on. Also, I can’t imagine that many people would call a sweater vest ‘flattering’, but I love those, too.

Thank you so much, Eleanor. I can actually see the Sound of Music influence in your vibe! Something I love about Eleanor’s Substack, Rabbit Fur Coat, is that any clothing item she recommends is secondhand. Also, she has a special talent for weaving together threads from current and historical events through clothing, as in this piece about the power of uniforms, but also in the power of clothing anonymity. Keep your eyes out for a post coming soon with thrift tips from Substackers, including Eleanor! Other posts in Thrift Month include my thoughts about clothing resellers, whether you can overconsume secondhand items, how to tell whether secondhand clothing is good quality and more! Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss anything and upgrade to paid to get access to the special stuff, like Eleanor’s wardrobe tips below!

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While my one-on-one personal styling work is paused, this is the only way to work with me directly. More details (including the sliding scale fee) and sign up to get early access here.

Four things happened in the same week.

A reader asked me the question below in an AMA.
A close friend was searching for pants that fit her waist-to-hip ratio.
An Instagram video of mine went mini-viral.
And while prepping for a podcast interview with , I came across this video from Mighty Murphin Power Ranger.

Here’s the reader question:

“I’d be curious to learn more about how you support people who have a very hard time finding anything that remotely fits. I think that’s probably my biggest barrier when it comes to editing things in my closet. This has been especially hard as my body has changed over the last few years.

I might not love it, and it might not even fit all that well, but it’s still as close as I can get and somewhat functions as clothing, if you know what I mean.

Perhaps I just need to find a good tailor (why is that so stressful?) and budget that in to the process. And/or maybe I need to find the replacement items first so I feel safe letting go of the sad “make-do” items taking up space in my closet?”

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My Instagram post was about how unsurprising it is that mass-produced clothing doesn’t fit our unique bodies, and there were many great comments about the need for alterations.

In Christine (a.k.a. Mighty Murphin Power Ranger)’s post, she spoke about trying on dresses and getting them tailored as just a matter of fact. I also follow a British woman with dwarfism who tailors every single item. The transformations are amazing. As for my friend, she eventually found pants she liked that fit, but my first suggestion was that she’d probably have to get something tailored.

My answer to the reader-submitted question above would be yes, find replacements for the make-do items before letting them go, and yes, find a tailor.

Are you seeing a pattern?

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s anything more daunting to deal with in our wardrobes than getting something tailored. There are a bunch of hurdles to jump: it’s expensive, it takes extra time and effort, your body might continue to change, and sometimes it feels just plain impossible to find a tailor.

To be honest, even as someone who deals with clothes for a living, I’m still a bit intimidated by tailoring. My frugal background is hard to push through, and in addition, I’ve been burned badly a couple of times.

unflattering

my clothing budget was $0

I was raised in a family without much money. My parents were labor organizers before I was born, my mom working and organizing in a sewing factory, and my dad working and organizing in a shipyard. My mom stopped working when I was born, and then had two more children, my sisters. My dad was seriously injured at work when I was 8 and wasn’t able to work after that. My mom went back to school to get her teaching certification and was the “breadwinner” (I put it in quotes because a teacher’s salary in Alabama in the 80’s wasn’t really winning much of anything) for the rest of my childhood…

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a year ago · 254 likes · 34 comments · Dacy Gillespie

Once, a dress I’d paid about $150 for was taken in way too much, and the tailor hadn’t left any seam allowance, so it couldn’t be fixed. That was from a tailor that my most snazzily dressed male friend recommended.

Another seemingly trustworthy recommendation from a friend who ran a designer consignment shop also turned out to be a disaster. I was working with a local bride who was wearing a white suit, and at that (highly recommended) tailor, the jacket also got taken in too much. I believe we ended up going with the suit jacket open and a colorful blouse underneath, but honestly, I’m not sure because it was such a stressful situation, I blocked it out.

The Molehill

what does $95 worth of tailoring get you?

Happy weekend sweet peas. Some quick news…

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a year ago · 214 likes · 34 comments · Viv Chen

I finally have two tailors in town that I recommend, but it took ten years to find them (granted, I wasn’t looking all that time). The one that is most convenient for me has fees that feel a little painful. I paid $50 to have a pair of pants taken in, and most recently, I paid $72 to have a voluminous formal dress hemmed. From what I’ve seen from content creators around the country, those prices are high, especially for a midwestern city, but at least I’m not (too) worried my garments will get ruined.

So I get it. I really do.

Also, I think tailoring may be one of the most practical ways to get clothes that fit1 and push back against overconsumption.

Fast fashion values speed, disposability, and profit margins over people.
Tailoring is slow, intentional, and human.

It’s a big mindset shift to start including the cost of tailoring into garments, but here are a few arguments for it:

• You’re building a relationship with a local tradesperson in your community.

• That skilled tradesperson is getting paid fairly for their work.

• If you’re considering in adding the cost of tailoring, you have to be more thoughtful about what you buy.

• More secondhand garments and garments in your own closet that never get worn could have a second life.

• There’s no impulse or instant gratification; you have to wait to see the results — the epitome of slow fashion.

• You’re able to get a better fit.

Could tailoring be a middle way? Could it be the closest thing we can get to the opposite of fast fashion?

In order for this to work, we have to start taking tailoring as a given, like Christine does. When we’re buying clothes, we should automatically add in the cost of tailoring, just as we would shipping or sales tax. If you buy a formal wedding dress, you expect to add the cost of tailoring, so why not clothes we actually wear more than once?

We also have to value clothing differently. In this piece, I mention how the percentage of Americans’ income spent on clothing has dropped drastically since globalization. Clothes used to cost more. People bought fewer items. They wore them longer. Alterations were expected — the cost was mentally built in. Ironically, we now spend much less per item but expect it to fit off the rack.

thoughts from my voice memo

how to find a tailor that works for you

One of the smartest style decisions I’ve ever made was getting a tailor; it’s completely transformed my relationship with clothing. From something as simple as having a pair of pants hemmed making them the length perfect for my height to completely having a piece altered into something new, it’s given me the power to make clothes do and be what I want. …

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a year ago · 16 likes · Shanna Battle

There is much to learn about the actual process of tailoring and what things can and can’t be altered. The best person to ask is always the tailor. I’m not an expert, but here’s what I’ve learned:

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Gemma had some big takeaways from our conversation, which are over on her Substack, Angry Woman. I also had one:

Gemma: You were saying, you grew up close to (Christian standards). I would say you grew up in it. The cultural expectations around style and appearance came from Christian patriarchal values.

Dacy: I’ve literally never thought of that, so thank you for bringing it together.

The biggest thing about growing up in the South is conformity. You have to conform. There isn’t much of a rebellious culture.

I wanted to fit in. I wanted the Guess jeans, the madras plaid hair bows. But my family was too different. The big social event every week was youth Bible study, and I wasn’t allowed to go. I felt other. And it’s striking me now how much that conformity came from religion.

I also had to laugh when Gemma started talking about how she was scared of color, because of course I’ve been there.

The conversation is only about 30 minutes, so I’d love it if you give it a listen. Let me know what you think!

The lightly edited transcript, thanks to Gemma, is below.

And so your book, Unflattering, is coming out next year, correct? Do you want to say a little bit about what that’s going to be?

Sure. Yeah. So, you know, it’s really kind of taking everything from my sub stack, everything that I’ve been doing this work in this way for 13, almost 14 years. And, you know, so the book will basically be like gathering all of that and putting it in one place. And the whole first part of the book is laying the groundwork for where those rules came from. Right. And so really connecting them with the patriarchy, with white supremacy, with, you know, Sonia Renee Taylor’s concept of the body hierarchy. Right. But yeah, and so that is really what it’s going to explore at first.

But then we do go into like a very practical kind of how-to guide in the later parts for how to discover your style without those influences. How to discover your style when it’s only presented on thin white bodies. How to explore that. How to go shopping for it. Big, big piece of secondhand and ethical shopping because that’s also important to me. Yeah, and just kind of pulling it all together. So that’s what my book is about. How about you, Gemma?

Yeah. So I’m the author of Fed Up, Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward. That was my first book. And it came out quite a long time ago, I think seven years ago now. And that book, I kind of talked a little bit about my Christian evangelical upbringing. And even at the time when the book came out, my agent kind of nudged me and was like, is that the thing you’d want to write a next book about? And I was like, absolutely not.

And many years later, you know, that did end up being the book that I wanted to write. And so this book, No One Loves an Angry Woman, that comes out September 22nd, is about the way that Christian patriarchy seeps into culture. And it’s a blend of memoir and poetry. cultural criticism, not personal criticism. And it’s kind of following my journey through evangelical culture and turning kind of away from the faith as an adult and what it’s like to navigate a world that’s still plays by those rules.

So as you were saying, you know, you grew up close to it. I would say you grew up in it. Like the cultural expectations that you probably had around style and what you should look like very, very much came from those Christian patriarchal values.

Yeah. In fact, I’ve literally never thought of this. So thank you for bringing this together. But the biggest thing about growing up in the South is the conformity. Like you have to conform. There really is not a culture in any substantial way like there is in other parts of the country where there’s a little rebellious group. Like, it really doesn’t exist. You know, I grew up there. My sister still lives there. She’s raising three girls.

And so, yeah, that’s really interesting to me because that was – That was what I aspired to, but my family was too different, right? So I wanted to fit in. I wanted to have all those, the guess jeans and the madras plaid hair bows and, you know, all the stuff. And yes, I grew up in it because the big social event every week for kids was going to like the youth Bible study on Wednesday nights, and I was not allowed to go. Yeah. So good job parents, but I felt very, you know, other.

But yeah, it’s just striking me now about the conformity, which certainly came from that religious, you know, piece of the society.

Yeah. Yeah. I know like the South is a lot of evangelical and Baptist. You know, I grew up in mostly evangelical, but also like we, we dabbled around in some Baptist churches. Like we’ve, you know, kind of done a lot of different moving around through that in my youth.

Um, I think I would definitely say evangelical was like my, my primary upbringing because that’s the kind of school that I went to. So I went to a, you know, very small, we’re talking like 10 people in a graduating class. Um, which, you know, was very isolated.

So I grew up in a place where you would not expect there to be really heavy handed, um, religious influence. I grew up in Santa Rosa, California, um, kind of, yeah. Uh, but I was very sheltered away from mainstream culture by, you know, where, where I would go is the Wednesday night youth group. Um, if I was going to go somewhere and then like the only exposure I really had to the outside world was like, if I did an extracurricular, um.

And there was always a lot of kind of trepidation about me doing dance, not necessarily from my parents, but from other parents because secular place, we were listening to secular music, we were moving in secular ways. And I’m like, I don’t know. I’m a 12 year old with braces trying to do hip hop dance. Like it’s really, it’s really not that great.

Well, it was, it was an interesting, Yeah, well, if it’s okay with you, I’d love to kind of ask you some questions that I usually ask clients just to kind of get a fuller story of how that upbringing affected your style in that time. Is that okay with you?

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