Salvation Army, Spring 2013

Digitally reliving the excitement of Fashion Week, from New York to London, Milan and to France, while remaining static in Ann Arbor, Michigan gives you a taste of fashion just big enough to make you salivate over the newest from Yves Saint Laurent while simultaneously face palming every time you see another Ugg-and- legging-Northface-rocking- Lily Pulitzer-planner using female on campus.  What’s worse, any attempt to ameliorate this disconnect by shopping at retailers such as Forever 21 and H&M only reinforces the idea of mass fashion production and an overall lack of creativity.  Try going to Saks Fifth Avenue or Bloomingdales and you either  pass out from sticker shock because the average price for most remotely unique items are about a gajillion dollars, or you suffer from a serious case of #firstworldproblems because the newest collection hasn’t even his retailers yet.

The Solution? Salvation Army, Spring 2013.

The Salvation Army is a treasure chest of strangely unique but wardrobe defining pieces that can be exclusively yours.  Multi-textural black leather pencil skirts, men’s ethnic garb turned into chicly loose tribal dresses, white wing tip kitten heels, and perfectly broken in jean shorts (jorts?), all on the budget of a few drinks at your local hipster coffee joint, are what make this a haven for the economically conscious style savvy. Yes, you will have to sift through the clothing and it may take time, but the reward of finding something so different from what anyone else can even attempt to buy is empowering.  The selection may not necessarily provide the same results as off-the-runway trends, but the overwhelming amount of extraordinarily strange clothing provides variety so large that it is so easy to incorporate and interpret a trend into what you find at the Salvation Army, at least in terms of color, silhouette, and pattern, while constructing it to be a part of your personal style.

The clothes themselves tell a story other than being pumped directly out a machine, which was programmed to create a very calculated piece of clothing that would satisfy the trendy needs of most consumers. Instead, you are left with a piece of clothing that had a life and a story with whoever donated the item.  Someone may have used that blouse to block the sun while travelling in Egypt, used that coat while they watched their daughter’s first soccer game, or done something really unsettling and dangerous in those shoes. As long as the pieces are washed thoroughly, the dirt and smell will leave, and what’s left is a piece that may have lived a life as long as you.

The elephant stomping around is that the Salvation Army is a strong Christian entity and is notoriously against anything related to homosexuality.  The organization claims to not discriminate anyone it serves, although it will not hire anyone that is homosexual.  It provides a resource to families internationally that are constrained to an extremely low price point, and are inflexible in their budget.   The organization also provides food and shelter for those in need. Although the organization has formally apologized on behalf of Maj. Andrew Craibe of the Salvation Army who stated that homosexuals “deserve to die,” the choice to boycott an organization that also provides great resources to the community is a decision that has to be made on an individual level.  Strong social views against sexual discrimination, such as my own, may be reason enough to not buy into what the Salvation Army does. However it is also important to realize that it’s likely that the values of many organizations may not align with our own. Whether it is in terms of religion or environmental policy, outsourcing jobs or sexual orientation, the likelihood that one’s beliefs are completely in line with an organization’s is rare. In the case of this organization, at least there are strong benefits to the other pillars of charity that they do believe in.

Shopping, or “thrifting” as most trend seeking individuals would call it, at the Salvation Army also provides environmental benefits by decreasing the demand for market-driven fashion trends at the mass retail level.   The clothing is reused and therefore serves a relatively environmentally friendly alternative to shopping at retailers who use new energy to create these products.

The decision to remain loyal to Forever, designer pieces, political views, or the Salvation Army is up to you.  However, the resource to truly unique pieces, and the excitement of finding something so uniquely your own, is unparallel.