A new, terrible era in my online shopping life has begun. One where any remaining iota of self-restraint has been completely banished, where there is an uneasy sense that the person at the helm of the Good Ship Buyalot (me) is, in fact, deeply unhinged. It’s a bit like that scene where Scar takes his place at Pride Rock (Lion King reference, keep up): you can almost see the skies darkening, the hyenas circling, the vultures swooping in. For I have discovered the Vinted app and it is surely going to lead to my ultimate demise.
Perhaps not financially, because almost everything I look at on Vinted seems to be (inexplicably) priced at either four pounds or six and I very rarely actually buy anything, but if I carry on using the app at my current rate (approximately one third of the working day) then I will almost definitely become malnourished, jobless and completely estranged from my entire family by the time the calendar flips over to 2025.
How have I not taken Vinted seriously before now? Was it because I’d been scrolling through the listings aimlessly – amateur! – watching creased, soiled garment after creased, soiled garment flick across the screen in front of my eyes and feeling progressively more and more disheartened? Here, an Isabel Marant dress so stained it looks like the Turin Shroud; there a pair of Louboutin heels “with no red soles left and missing a buckle otherwise very good condition”.
I am not that kind of person and I don’t have the stamina. What I do have, however, is quite a laser-sharp shopping focus when it comes to finding that “one thing” that my wardrobe is missing. (The fact that I tend to find a missing thing at least every month is inconvenient, but surely at some point the job will be done? The capsule edit will be complete, perfected, and there will be a (comfy) outfit for every occasion?)
It might be a pair of slouchy black leather boots that I’m after, or a tweed pencil skirt, a masculine blazer or a houndstooth coat: once I’ve imagined myself in this garment I cannot rid my mind of the mental images that ensue. The houndstooth coat worn with jeans and trainers, or perhaps shoulder-robed over the top of a sequinned dress. Me in Paris (when do I ever go to Paris?!) striding through the Marais with my beret on and – you’ve guessed it – the houndstooth coat; me sitting outside a cool New York deli with my houndstooth coat draped artfully over one arm, sipping coffee from a cool coffee cup made from recycled coffee bean husks.
I DON’T EVEN DRINK COFFEE! I’VE NEVER HAD A COFFEE IN MY LIFE!
(This is my problem with fashion and with dressing myself in general: I am totally unrealistic and I dress for an entirely different life to the one I actually lead. I dress for a person who doesn’t even exist. This all needs a longer post and a big discussion, but it is truly the root of all my time-wasting fashion forays.)
Anyway, yes. I have this laser-sharp shopping focus once I’ve got an essential wardrobe addition fixated into my mind, and once I’d discovered the search filters on Vinted, and that I could eliminate 90% of the unsuitable items in one fell swoop, I realised that there was this whole new universe of fashion-buying open to me. No longer was I restricted to the latest trends and “new drops” in the online stores: if I wanted a houndstooth coat then the world was my proverbial oyster. I could get an M&S number from last season (“bought this and changed my mind”) or a Max Mara one from the nineties. Pure wool, cashmere, belted, oversized, the options were endless.
And this is why Vinted is so very addictive. You could be thrown three hundred items that match your search for “pink pussy bow blouse” and lose half an hour just trying to cross-check the best results on Google Lens. (Have you done this yet? You click the camera icon in the Google search bar and then upload a photo and Google will find matching results. Brilliant if, for example, there’s a dress you’ve seen but you don’t know how it’ll look on because the sales listing only has it hung on a coat hanger. Or if it’s a pair of sunglasses and you can’t tell for the life of you whether they’re an oversized style or petite and neat. I have my friend and chief enabler Sam Chapman to thank for this particular tip, though I’m pretty sure I’m very late to the party.)
