What do you have to consider when selling fashion?

A sleeveless red etuic dress by Diane von Fürstenberg. A gold -colored cocktail dress from Talbot Runhof. Two bronze -colored bangles with turquoise stones by the Paris jewelry designer Sylvia Toledano. And red paint shoes of the Spanish brand Pretty Ballerinas. My shopping yield of the past few weeks is impressive. All high -quality classics that I will enjoy for a long time and that look so much better than fast shreds of soil, H&M or Zara.

I neither won the lottery nor covered my account. For the new stars in my wardrobe, I only had to pay 35 euros, 75 euros, 120 euros and 65 euros – instead of the 400 euros, 1200 euros, 400 euros and 200 euros, which they would otherwise cost. 295 euros for 2200 euros, that is saved in a smooth 1905 euros. My secret? For two years I have been buying half of my clothes on vintage platforms, everything online. In the past, secondhand smelled of the Berlin muffer garages, in which you could buy clothes after kilos, or looked like Red Cross flea markets, on which we bought old fox jackets as students who lost their hair on the car seats of the friends.

The so-called pre-loved trend is not just about saving money in times when a piece of strawberry cake costs just seven euros in the Berlin “Café Einstein”. Since the fashion apps Vestiaire Collective, Vinted and Resee have been installed on my cell phone, I have been exposed to the stimulus of clothes with history that I save from destroying and shaving. How long will I do that? No idea. In any case, every clothing package that brings the postman to the door brings a small novel made of fabric.

Just like the best discovery of the past few months: the dramatically draped Talbot-Runhof dress in gold, which Mireille sent me from Geneva. I took longer price negotiations in French. “I only wore the dress at a wedding once,” she wrote to me when I asked about his biography because I had concerns about a possible fake in the low starting price. Mireille wanted to sell it as soon as possible because gold is such a fancy color even for a cocktail dress. Who wants to have a dress with a frame over the bare arms that looks like the packaging of a Mozart ball? So: 75 euros. “Have fun!” Standed on a small note that Mireille from Geneva had put into the clothes package. Unfortunately, both of us had not built up a relationship that I could ask what the marriage made, whose beginning she celebrated in this dress. What there was to eat at the wedding and what the other guests wore.

I know even less from the owner of the Red Etuikleid from Diane von Fürstenberg on a slight stretch jersey for 35 euros. It previously belonged to Vera from Germany. Why doesn't Vera not attract the great dress anymore? The sensitive fabric is in a one-a state, you don't even have to shorten the hem, because you can elegantly push the material up and down on your hips. Has Vera gained ten kilos? Is the red a trace too coral? Does she only wear boyfriendjeans? In any case: I call the Diane dress my vera dress. If Vera knew that.

And where we are already at red: The red paint shoes for 65 euros from Pretty Ballerinas are the surprising good mood bangs. Of course you don't need to survive ballerinas in the look of love apples with icing. Nevertheless, they should be paid by the health insurance because of their antidepressant effect. Whenever I wear it, I guarantee a compliment, especially from men who seem to love red shoes in addition to high -heeled black boots. When I look at my feet and shoe up the shoes, I have to smile. I often think of the unknown-known seller who only worn her before me. Even the stickers on the sole stuck.

Since my ever further shouting vintage love has led to territorial fights in the dressing room in family roommates, I don't give back the circulation that is not so loved. I have just dismissed my black Gucci overkeeping boots from embroidered logo office with high silver-colored paragraphs in bamboo shape via Vinted. I had – after all, there are collectibles from Tom Ford – with 400 euros. As a interest or a prospect named Armadio – in Italian that means a closet – I reported and offered 250 euros, I said yes. I couldn't walk in the Italian miracles anyway. Even the dressing was a pain, the undressing was much worse, because my duck feet were stuck in the extremely tight tips every time. I only admired her from time to time like a sculpture.

So they went back to Pesaro to their country of origin after I bought them eight years ago in a small second -hand shop in Wolfenbüttel for 100 euros. There I had acquired orange paisley pantolettes with a small paragraph of Emilio Pucci in a seizure of color happiness-half a number too large. Because they were so beautiful, I imagined that the terraces of my friends also casually take off with these Aperol Spritz-Hour models. Unfortunately I didn't even get down the stairs of our house with them, because they had no straps and I practically fell out of them. Beginner error. After all, I was able to sell them on Vinted for 60 euros and came out with zero.

Sometimes I no longer stop spontaneously or rarely worn collector's pieces – and then take them out because I don't want to give them up like old cuddly toys. Just like the Khakifarben Marc-Jacobs rubber boots with high heels and art fur edge, which are priceless in my memory (I bought them during a cloudbreak for a fortune in Toulouse, where it never really rains according to German feeling). I carried it out on the street three times, once presented to a costume party, that was it. Since they are made of a strange plastic, they seem to be sucking on their legs, they sweat in them and do not come out of them alone. Still, they are great. But fashion is not logical. Otherwise we would only have a single skirt for the week and a second for Sunday, like our mothers after the Second World War.

A journey through the pages of Vestiaire Collective and their online competition is always a mixture of fashion seminar, “Vogue” archive and the imaginary play in Netflix series such as “Mad Men”. I am just mentally in a Geoffrey Beene phase, but I haven't dared to order a piece of the legendary American designer from the 1960s. The knee -length dresses and coats with the big buttons already look yesterday's mobile display – well – yesterday. The photographed labels also appear old -fashioned and musty. But Betty Halbreich's stories lure me over him. The personnel shopper of the New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, who died last year, wrote in her last book about the legendary quality of Beenes.

There is also a Yves-Saint-Laurent dress from the spring/summer 2011 collection on my vintage wish list. A kind of competent black flamenco maxi dress with wild pink frills and orange edges on the neckline. The thumbnail -sized pictures of this model on my cell phone display fascinated me so much that I watched pictures of this collection on the net on my big computer screen for a whole evening. The big opera. Maybe I could hang the auctioned dress on the wall like a work of art. However, it still costs 534 euros, and it would certainly be more sensible to buy shares for the money. But: knowing that this dress is somewhere makes me happy.

For the fashion designers of our time who have to sell their clothes, the pre-loved hype is of course bad for sales. On the other hand, he is a tribute to the importance of her designs and gives your ideas the illusion of immortality. The other day I have with one Trip Down Memory Lane Found exactly the Laura Ashley model on Ebay, in which I danced through the Viennese balls in the mid -1990s. “Laura who?” Asked my daughter. I had given away the princess dress at some point – where, I don't even know anymore – and then regrets it again and again. Because with its rub -colored tabrock, the black velvet players and the black velvet top, it was made like for me.

But then the find: my dress lives with an ebay seller in Bonn! Unfortunately I was too slow and meanwhile it was sold for 81.99 euros. For this I am considering whether I should invest in a black and red coat dress with a bulkhead, also a Laura-Ashley model from the winter collection 1985. I like to drink Earl Gray with milk, preferably read the magazine “Tatler” while driving and see how our non-existent Labrador could nestle on the black and collar. However, the seller takes 189.90 euros for the dress, and I find that a lot.

But what is a lot of money for a piece of fabric? What is little? How much are the threads of stories worth? As I write this text, the narrow gold -colored bracelets with turquoise stones from Sylvia Toledano are thrown on my arm joint. You cost 120 euros. For this, when I sighted Paris, I think of my friend Ali, who bought a belt with turquoise stones in New York. To Byzantium, to the French writer Christine Orban with her clothing novel “Fringues”. On treasure chests in the imagination – and online.