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"  Vintage clothing is a passion of mine and a method of expressing my individuality on a budget. Not only has my fashion philosophy been influenced by my life, but it has served me well in my current cash-strapped circumstances and guided me in my sartorial choices as I attempt to regain employment. As you might expect, designer labels are a pipe dream for a 24-year-old homeless girl. My clothes are secondhand, the result of hours spent ransacking thrift stores and scouring dusty vintage racks, although I have regrettably had to sell my most cherished finds since becoming homeless. However, my thrift store habits are not a direct result of my homelessness. They began much earlier, upon entering the work force as a child. After relinquishing my paychecks to support my family, with a small allowance returned to me, I was required to finance my own clothing. Expensive clothes were not an option for me in my youth, which was spent supporting an angry, closet-alcoholic, unmedicated bipolar mother and a younger sister. As a consequence, designer labels never struck me as necessary. I obtained a work permit at 12 and worked two, even three jobs simultaneously, in addition to attending school. It was therefore important for me to develop my style very early on; dress and appear more mature than I actually was. Through perseverance, I managed to eventually move out on my own, ascend into better-paid, corporate work, and build a life for myself outside of the strictly controlled, walled-off world I was accustomed to. I blazed a trail through every thrift store I found along the way, cherry-picking used business suits, hats, vintage sundresses, round-toed pumps, chunky antique pendants. Through a fair amount of trial-and-error, learning from my blunders, therapy, and just plain growing up, I managed to plug along relatively well, until I was laid off and my spiral descent into homelessness began.    Fashion is all about the thrill of the hunt for me. There is no excitement, no challenge for me in entering a mall and picking from a limited selection. A thrift store is inherently a land of infinite possibilities; I may find little that day, or (more often) there is that brilliant &amp;quot;a-ha!&amp;quot; moment, after an hour of digging, when I surface with exactly the right item in exactly the right color, in exactly the right size, which drapes exactly right along my figure. I didn&amp;#039;t know it existed up until that point, but now that I&amp;#039;ve found it, I can&amp;#039;t live without it (and since any given item generally runs in the $5 range, I don&amp;#039;t have to). I don&amp;#039;t have to be rich to look chic, put-together, and fabulous\u2014it&amp;#039;s an almost indescribable adrenaline rush.  I aspire to the glamour of Dita Von Teese.I envy her all-vintage wardrobe, impeccable hair and makeup, her confident carriage as she rocks the Victorian porcelain skin in lieu of the ubiquitous Cheeto-orange, California faux-tan. It is this sort of sentimental nostalgia I incorporate into my clothing choices. It&amp;#039;s the main reason I cried when &amp;quot;Pushing Daisies&amp;quot; was cancelled; I missed the magical, hauntingly beautiful wardrobe.Fashion-wise, perhaps I was born in the wrong era. In my perfect world, I&amp;#039;d be a cross between 1940s film stars Maureen O&amp;#039;Hara and Gene Tierney. And I&amp;#039;d do it on a thrift-store budget. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a2675/a-thrift-store-shopper-at-heart-2070/>