I attended the eBay Endless Runway show this London Fashion Week, a catwalk of pre-loved designer items and the most composed auction I have ever witnessed. It was a circular moment—I have been shopping on the platform before I was old enough to own a bank card (thank you mum) and buying second-hand clothes even before that.
No Lifeline
Not to get too gushy but shopping second-hand is more to me than a good bargain. I find it hard to say because I don’t believe that I’m a victim: I grew up poor. Not parents are challenging me to make something of myself but will throw me a lifeline poor. There is no lifeline poor. When I was applying for university, my town was in the country’s bottom 20% for deprivation and higher education stats. Telford is known for three things: the industrial revolution, grooming gangs and a man who stole £40,000 worth of Cadbury creme eggs and made national news. Then you sprinkle five siblings, chronically-ill parents and a three-bed council house on top of that. Poor indeed.
I wanted to look good and feel good but lacked the budget. That brought me to the charity shops at the age of 15. Pieces that went “out of style”, were purchased for costume parties or pried off of corpses (call it macabre but I say if the item was good enough to die in, it’s good enough to live in). However, it was my first visit that got me hooked on the charity shop high. I found a real, full-length, fur coat for just a fiver. It was two sizes too small and smelled terribly of cigarettes. But it was a real fur coat nonetheless. And it was mine. Assaulting my dad’s nose, I used to walk around my family home pretending to be the rich aunt visiting from the city. A subtle foreshadowing.
A Nervous Twitch
We’ve established the first problem was being poor. The second is that I struggled with a crippling social anxiety that slowly crept into my life as I went into secondary school. I was a timid child and, being in a large family and growing up black in a very white town, always worried that people didn’t find me worth listening to. I was also passionate and active in the community, so the next decade quickly became complicated. At 16, I gave a speech in Parliament about racial discrimination that was aired on BBC Parliament. But I was also shaking whenever someone new spoke to me and I couldn’t order food in person for fear of getting the order wrong or committing the cardinal sin of saying “you too!” in response to the cashier saying “enjoy the food”. This is where eBay (and my mum’s card) swiftly came in. I saved some lunch money to pay my mum for the items. I didn’t cut out the charity shops entirely (because nothing beats five items for £5) but I reserved my trips for the days I was feeling brave.
Fun fact for everyone else but me, I have a nervous twitch in my right lip. It comes whenever I do something new and public. Interestingly enough, I didn’t have that during the show. I’m always nervous during a fashion show and trying my best to hide it. But something about that show made me feel like I belong there.
Steadily expanding
I started thrift flipping at university because I had grown from a poor child into a poor student and just wanted to have what everyone else did. I also attended a sustainable fashion festival where I learned that we had enough clothes on the planet to clothe the next six generations and that fashion was the second biggest water-polluting industry. So, freshly radicalised, I’d buy curtains, old ugly jumpers—whatever I could find on eBay to make the dresses that everyone else was wearing to parties. In those days, I hand-stitched the pieces I made, so I couldn’t fully commit to the craft because time was as hard to come by as money.
The pandemic was actually a blessing for me. Saying that out loud does feel quite Farquaad-esque. I was nearing the final year of my Politics degree and stressed about what comes next. Would I work for Lloyds Bank? (They did give me a scholarship and two paid internships to get me through the degree.) Solitude made me realise I love writing and fashion. I wrote my dissertation on Fashion as Political Participation, secured in an internship at FT Weekend and applied for a journalism masters. Most importantly, I finally bought a sewing machine. Candy, she was called. Mainly because it was John Lewis’ budget Janome in candy pink. No piece of clothing or homeware in eBay’s catalogue was off limits from that point.
The Runway Is Truly Endless
And this brings me back to the show. It was refreshing to see archival pieces return to the runway and a reminder that with pre-loved, you never run out of ways to make old things new. The turnout was huge with many familiar faces in fashion in attendance.
Who am I in this ecosystem? Currently, an observer. A writer too—My article on the show needs to be on my editor’s desk by the end of the month. But I’m observing the collision of two worlds: a world of glamour and intricacy and the world that I inhabit. I’m also an alchemist in the metaphorical sense. To upcycle is to transform. And so it is to style. And while the end result is beautiful, it’s the process that pushes me to new heights.
