16 5.8.22 Illustration by Dana Robinson
By Véronique Hyland
Dump Couture
The plain black wicker bag between my
knees bore no designer label, just a ‘‘Made
in British Hong Kong’’ tag that dated it
to the last millennium. Extravagantly
sturdy, it had the air of what magazines
might call an investment piece. When the
friend sitting next to me at a New York
Fashion Week event inquired about its
provenance, I decided, for once, not to lie.
‘‘It’s from the dump,’’ I said.
When I was a fl edgling fashion editor,
living broke in New York, the dump was
my secret. Or at least, it was a secret in
New York. On the summer trips I made
to small-town Massachusetts, the dump
there was an agora of junk, a festival of
refuse — the local newspaper listed what
was new and hot, and people gathered
just to gossip and shoot the breeze. I’ve
never been bold enough to fi sh directly
from the dump’s central piles of rust-
ed castoff s. But its Swap Shop — a tiny
cottage — had come to serve as a free
boutique of sorts, and there I discoveredmany items of weird delight, including a
pair of sky blue clogs that could pass for
Rachel Comey, and a circa-1970s Gucci
scarf, patterned with leaping zebras,
that earned me compliments at Paris
Fashion Week.
I loved the Swap Shop, and not only
because everything was free. When I
walked into curated, antiseptic bou-
tiques, I felt starved for novelty. Survey-
ing the Swap Shop’s jumble, I saw infi nite
possibilities. Even the most dated clothes16
Uncovering
stylish treasures in
the junk pile.Letter of Recommendation