Well, technically I had been introduced to it before that, but I didn't realize it at the time. You see, the friend with whom I was running around Cambridge told me that we were going to someplace called The Garment District which I had seen ads for but had never been to. On the way she explained to me that it was a magical place where you could buy used clothing by the pound, and at that point I thought that this concept sounded vaguely familiar. Then when we went inside and found ourselves in a room with a giant heap of clothing in the middle of the floor my memory started working and I realized that the reason I knew about this place was because Rabi had written about it years ago. Blogging makes real life weird sometimes.

But, anyway.

Once you convince yourself that it is okay to walk all over all the clothes, because that is the only way to go through most of them, you can really get down to the business of trying to find something you like among all this crap, most of which is being sold by the pound for very good reasons. You can't go in there and tell yourself that you want a shirt, or a skirt, or a jacket, because there is no possible way to pull those things out of the pile with any kind of accuracy. All of a sudden you are shopping by color and texture, and when you find a color and texture you like you have to hope as hard as you can, as you disentangle it from the things around it, that it turns out to be an appropriate object to wear.

I have been disappointed many times. I saw something that looked full of fun pockets and it turned out to be a coat sized for an eight-year-old boy. I saw sweaters that looked warm and well-made but inevitably had those scary giant turtleneck things. I saw thick corduroy which would have made a spectacular jacket but was unfortunately in the shape of pants.

But the finds make it all worth it. I found a long, light brown, water-resistant coat with no buttons which just happened to fit me perfectly. I found a blue silk blouse which is a bit oddly cut but can almost certainly be altered. I saw a spectacular red-and-black Chinese-looking fabric from a distance and desperately hoped that it would be a skirt or dress. It turned out to be a hideous shirt, but once I had seen in my head what I thought it might be, I knew I could use the fabric to make the skirt I had imagined.

It is really about shopping for potential clothes. When I saw the coat I knew that if I bought it snazzy buttons, it would be a treasure. (And I did -- these ones.) When I saw the ugly shirt with the pretty fabric, I knew that I wanted to give it a second life as something beautiful. When I go to Dollar a Pound, I see not only the potential for old, musty, half-broken clothing to be flattering and attractive, but also the potential in my own arms and hands to give these things new life with needle and thread.