by devon

Second hand clothing market is cesspool. Searching for decent clothes I like and are of good, natural materials in Normal price is a very… masochistic nowadays. So I decided to torture myself more and make most of my new wardrobe myself.

In past few months I finally ended up losing over 10kg of excess weight I had, I went down from being around 73-74kg with 165cm of height to 61-62kg. It helped me a lot, I don’t fucking hate how I look and I feel healthier, I have more energy and I stopped sleeping during the day. I still want to drop 1-2kg but I’d prefer more to excercise now as I want to have some muscles, which results in more strenght I need.

For years I hated myself that much I barely got myself clothing, even if I did find something second-hand I liked it was highly embarassing as my clothing taste during middle and high school… was something else. Additionally I felt that I’ll feel stupid wearing things I actually like and that I’m too fat so I shouldn’t put effort at all. It changed now, as my taste did.

Now my clothing taste is actually closer to what my human characters would wear rather what my sonas wear because I want them comfortable, when irl I like to put more effort into what I wear. Generally it’s stuff that more mature young woman back in year 2000 would wear, which will look kinda funny now but I don’t care really. I got my style in place, my preferred colors. But where to source clothes?

Vinted is most common way to buy second-hand clothes online now, as they got excellent filtering but it got so many issues. Per rules it bans for-profit resale, as it deviates from it’s roots as sort of thing closer to clothing exchange, yet you have girls who have too much of free time and money and re-sell things that usually aren’t worth that money (the amount of old H&M bias cut check skirts from some kind of polyester sold for 50-70 złotys is staggering.) but with proper digging you get people just selling stuff they don’t wear anymore. But there another issue comes, that lower priced things sell fast. Like woolen pants, coats and sweaters or nicer dresses, shirts and blouses, etc. (for winter) I might have more luck with sleeveless/short sleeve sweaters, woolen skirts (actually loads of these listed, none from my faves sold so far. Except one I got) and jackets (fitted ones I want, actual cuts for women rather men’s blazers listed in women’s section)… and that’s all.

I can snag some of these but sometimes they get sold before even seller replies to me with information about material or measurements, as I need them because turn of the millennium/00s sizing feel inconsistent, for now I can squish myself into EU38 clothes from that time – like Burda’s 38 fits me. But it’s too stressful, I can’t try things on, so I decided to sew most of my clothes instead.

For now, for current season I made one skirt. From stuff I bought I have two sleeveless turtlenecks, one bias cut check skirt and two pairs of jeans that are of my size. I don’t know how many things I’ll make but I’ll start update cycle on both devon.somnol and summaries on the blog. I have 3 sweaters started, quite few fabrics washed and ton of patterns copied. I’ll try to make most of my clothes myself as I already got ugly pile of linen (it’s waiting for spring and summer, but I can make some tops right now) and my growing pile of woolen fabrics, which need to be used up.

I’ll buy some things for now that I need, but still I need to kick myself in the ass and get to work. I plan working on all sweaters in different stages of progression, sew few skirts and get around to making fitting muslins of pants and a shirt. After making both of these from proper fabric, I want to jump into making jackets and coats and start with a muslin as usual. I want to show my progress at least once a week here and get around to working on site stuff again, even just for update log for this stuff.

Wish me luck guys. I hope to stick to it and not dump it as usual.