Some of my favourite articles of clothing are things I’ve “rescued” from great estate sales. I have a beautiful mint condition mink stole that I purchased at a sale for a whole $5! An embroidered signature inside let me know the lady who had treasured it was named Angel. I feel as though I rescue old treasures and help them live to party another evening. The one item that always gets raves is a red faille 3/4 swing jacket from the 40’s that was $7.50. Then there’s the collection of evening bags that I wish could talk. Kelly, we could have a ball shopping.

LOL sounds like we both did a pretty good job with our kids values, my daughter is also very into the second hand/consignment stores. We spent a Saturday several weeks ago hitting a bunch of them she knows, we spent more on lunch than any one purchase. She says she can look as sharp as the high earners in her office at one tenth the cost or less.

Dear Honey of a Gal: Here’s a bit from a piece in the MAIL section of the current New Yorker that you might get a kick out of: Reading Nick Paumgarten’s article on Greenwich. CT.. I couldn’t help remembering the days I lived there, in a tiny studio apartment in a run-down Victorian house, a stroll away from Greenwich Avenue, where Woolworth’s still cooked the best hamburger in town. For three hundred and sixty dollars a month, I had a deck, a fireplace, and original red-and green stained-glass windows. I stuffed my bed in a closet so that I could have a living room during the day, and the best clothes I’ve ever owned came from the Greenwich Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Shop. It all seems a long time ago, but this was in the early nineteen-eighties. Back in town for a visit a few years ago, I went searching for a little of that old life and stopped in at the thrift shop. There was a sale that day, and I was thrilled to find a rug for half the twenty-five-dollar price tag. I eagerly handed over a twenty-dollar bill. The woman behind the counter shot me a look of such withering contempt that she could have patented it. “The rug,” she hissed, “was twenty-five HUNDRED dollars. It is now twelve hundred and fifty dollars, and you are twelve hundred and thirty short.” Lucky for you, Kelly, you get MUCH better deals!