the new thing i’m doing lately is shopping for vintage clothes and selling them on ebay.  i like to shop, but i can’t really afford to shop, so this way i can shop without doing any damage to my bank account.  i sell most of the clothing as-is, but i do some of it up all alison-style with the sewing and whatnot.  when i come home from thrift-store shopping, the dog attacks my hands and arms with her nose, smelling the clothing and accessories of a hundred different people on me.  i’m amazed she doesn’t pass out from the sheer ecstasy of it all.

when i shop for vintage clothing, three things happen:

1.  i manage to come across every single item in the store that has been manufactured by old navy.  sadly, i seem to have conformist radar.  that’s what i get for shopping there through most of the nineties.

2.  jessica, when she comes along with me, manages to come across every single shiny, puffy, spangled item in the store that has been manufactured in the eighties.  her eighties radar is much more hilarious, and thus better, than my old navy radar.

3.  i find at least one or two items that are identical to things i have owned.  it happens every single time, and boy is it creepy.  i’m going through the racks and racks of shirts and skirts and tank tops, and there it is.  the shirt i wore every week my freshman year in college.  the sweater i had in plymouth.  the skirt i took to new york with me.  sometimes it’s a different size, sometimes it’s more or less faded or worn, but mostly it’s the same as mine.  did the owner of the other copy take theirs out of town?  did they loan it to their friends?  did they wear it when they fell in love?  i think of the previous owners of these garments as the OTHER MEs.  are the other mes anything like the me me?  if so, how many other mes are out there?

at any rate, here are some photos of the vintage clothes i’ve sewn up.  they’re being modeled by a most generous volunteer, otherwise known as my sister megan.