Ten Minutes: The Devil Wears...

I am an inveterate second-hand shopper.  I have been haunting garage sales, rummage sales, flea markets and second-hand stores for great buys on otherwise expensive stuff since I was a teen-ager.  That’s forty-plus years (yikes!)  Why buy new when you can get some really cool stuff for a small fraction of the cost of something fresh off the rack at Macy’s?  I’d be willing to bet that something like 75% of the clothes in my closet are from resale shops.  My idea of an engaging, relaxing afternoon is to spend two or three hours sifting through a Goodwill store and scoring great deals.

So the other day when I was down in Eugene, my sister and I hit a couple of St. Vinnie’s (St. Vincent de Paul—a Catholic relief organization that takes donations of clothing and household goods then sells them off in several big stores around town as a way of providing employment and filling their coffers to provide housing and other services to those in need.)  I have been in the market to expand my summer wardrobe, since I realized once the weather started to heat up that I am short on crop pants and summer shirts.

After about a half hour I had tried on a couple of pairs of capris that didn’t fit, chose and discarded one or two blouses, when I came upon this:

A black t-shirt with “bling” and interesting graphics.  Just the kind of thing I wear.  But I have several of these already…do I really need another one?

On closer examination, I realized the shirt was amazingly well-constructed. No wear-once-and-throw-it-away Walmart creation, this.  It also had no tags inside.  At all.  And I couldn’t see any traces of where tags had been cut out.  So…nice shirt.  I think I’ll try it on.

I get in the fitting room and find the t-shirt fits adequately.  Looks pretty good, in fact.  And for $3.27, I could use another nice t-shirt.  Maybe it could replace one of the shabbier ones in my drawer.  And then I look more closely at the graphics on the shirt.

Letters.  Those five little sets of double rows of rhinestones down the front of the shirt are parts of letters.  Let’s see:  “P…”  Paris?  No…  “P-R-…”  Premo?  Prince? 

“A…D….   P-R-A-D…A…?!  Prada?  Holy crap!”

Now, I have no idea whether this is, in fact, a t-shirt genuinely produced for that house which designs clothing for …denizens of the underworld.  Damned if I wasn’t gonna buy it, though…just in case.

Don’t know what Prada t-shirts go for these days, or even Prada knock-off t-shirts.  But I’m pretty sure it would be more than three dollars and twenty-seven cents.