Flea market cognoscenti are often asked to explain their secret. How it is that they always "just found" some really beautiful/valuable/interesting thing "somewhere or other" for the merest pittance. How it is that anyone can plunder so effortlessly, over and over, the ashcan of history. Much advice has been written on the subject recently, most of it along the lines of "wear comfortable shoes" and "follow your own Personal Style." Well, the hell with that nonsense. Sally forth with me, instead, on the true path of Flea philosophy.
In a four-part
series of essays, we will first present an introduction to Flea philosophy;
secondly, a primer on Style; the third part will cover Fieldwork; and the
grand finale will consist of a photo comparison of the findings of three
Flea experts, each entrusted with $100 at a different Flea venue.
Though the whole world is his oyster and his vision never fails him, not even in the middle of the most stultifying suburban Nordstrom, we will begin our study of the Flea philosopher at the thrift store. Let us follow him thither, into that unprepossessing building, dingy, lit with crooked fluorescent lights and reeking of dust, sweat, mold and that strange, slight, bizarrely acrid bouquet found nowhere else. There are three principal reasons the Flea philosopher haunts such humble places with almost religious fervor. The first is to do with
God is in the details.
--Mies van der Rohe
The thrift store is like a museum where you can touch everything, and what's more, haul it all home with you. Even the scariest artifact therein is not without at least a little interest; for in the humblest tattered paperback there is a little breath of history, an atom of manna. That French bad guy in the first Indiana Jones movie says something of the kind, as I recall, with regard to a ten-dollar watch. ("Bury it in the sand for a thousand years. Men will keel for it. Men lakh you… and me.")
It is difficult to make most anything, and even harder to make anything really well; hard to make it to last, and very hard indeed to keep it from harm for long. Just to conceive of an object, to make it, to drag it up real and whole onto the face of the earth, is a proof of something significant and even ineluctable. However accidental or passionately desired, any made thing bears traces of intention, narrative, and desire. The worth of made things, from the Flea perspective, is in the amount and quality of such information they contain, whether that information takes the form of cultural history or craft or philosophy or pure aesthetics.
Beyond this, any particular artifact has an additional, post facto money value that is, in truth, essentially arbitrary. The real monetary value of a thing, of course, is what someone will actually fork out for it. But why should this Chanel bag be worth $3,000 and that Prada one $1,000? And that quite nice tapestry thrift shop one $10? And that vintage Hermes Kelly bag $6,000?
Value, as we have seen, means more to the Flea philosopher than money value alone; money value is a single (important) element of his researches. Real value, real worth, is a far richer subject, it is personal; it has to do with vision, and again with history; with investment for gain; the temper of the times he himself lives in contributing yet another part. Luck; accident; skill in recognizing the subtle shifts of the mass hallucination we call culture.
Ah! During these conjectures, our philosopher appears
to have stumbled across a fine embroidered pillowcase.
The most cursory study will reveal that the kind of time it took to embroider
this pillowcase is no longer available today-almost not at any price. Since
the quality of manufactured goods almost invariably rises in direct proportion
to the amount of time required in the making: time=quality=money. The thrift
store magically releases us from the tyranny of this unpleasantly reliable
equation. An ordinary embroidered cotton pillowcase (rough, a bit hairy,
and available at shockingly low prices at Target) in no way compares to
this treasure, a properly hemstitched pillowcase of crisp smooth linen,
with finely wrought satin-stitched embroidered decorations-and yet, at a
decent thrift shop such as this, with luck, patience and some rudimentary
laundering skills, the cost will likely work out about the same. Actually
these particular pillowcases (there are two, as it happens, stapled-ugh!--together)
come in at a stunning 91c each; far less, in fact, than the Target ones.
There is a bit of soil, some creases. The fabric may have yellowed slightly
with age; careful, gentle laundering will tell the tale.
At the thrift shop, then, you can have very lovely beautifully made things, and for a tiny fraction of their cost new.
The second element is
The man of genius makes no mistakes.
His errors are volitional and they are the portals of discovery.
--James Joyce
Unlike the boringly predictable array of goods at the local Macy's, the selection at the thrift shop is different every day. Sure, sometimes it's really terrible-but at the very least, it's interestingly terrible. One might walk out without a thing, and other days one needs an accomplice just to help stuff the swag into the car. Its sheer unpredictability makes the thrift store not only a museum, but also a natural laboratory for style. Suddenly it becomes obvious, what is required to make life complete is this crinoline, that bit of silk velvet. A chandelier of lurid orange plastic. A petit-point pillow pops into view, an old Belgian movie poster with a mendable little tear, a collection of postcards made on holiday in 1912 … voila, from these elements a room, a novel, a movie set, a line of clothing or the theme of a website might emerge--just out of a series of random realities all shaken together. The very randomness of things can give a far clearer view of the nascent future than a more tightly edited, more personal view.
An aside: it's
very strange, watching the 70s come back to life almost thirty years later. At the time
(my teenage years) I was the most monstrous snob (not like now!) and would
never have been caught dead in the eye-scorching polyester blouses I favor
today. A sobering fact. And yet the 70s seen from the millennial perspective look so very different.
So lively, so vivid and carefree. These elements have been brought to the
fore, and the wingéd hairstyles left mercifully in the mists of antiquity.
Not to mention which, I do so enjoy taunting my unfortunate inner teenager
with such things as bell-bottoms. In those days I only wore only the smallest mandarin
or Nehru collars on my silk or cotton shirts, and I thought that huge lapels
and oversized paisley prints were for yahoos. Ah, me. And now I can be seen
all over Southern California, vaulting across the room at the merest glimpse
of a Pucci
print.
The third great impetus of Flea philosophy is
--Keats.
It's a wonderful relief to save something valuable from the landfill. It satisfies not only the desire to reduce, reuse and recycle, but the infinitely more profound desire to hold on to that which is fleeting. There is scarcely any greater satisfaction to a dyed-in-the-wool Flea philosopher than to save beauty and worth from certain perdition.
In closing:
The world is vast and filled with beautiful things. The rare, the fine and the rarefied, the arcane, the eccentric, the shocking, are everywhere around us. Those who can shake off the enervating hum of What They Would Think, of the mindless drone of advertising, can live instead in that rich, teeming, lyrical, unpredictable world and adventure into it every day. Beauty, life and humor are bursting towards us from every direction. Open your eyes, reach out your hand. It is in this frame of mind that you must head out into the universe: receptive, awake, ready to be educated, and as ready to judge, to sift and discover and make and connect and invent, and compass with mind, heart and sinew the traces of history, and forge culture anew.
Please stay tuned for the second installment of
our series.
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