op-shopping and sweat-shopping

Opshopping has never been an activity that compelled me that much. This could be down simply to my not having any real interest in clothes, or maybe because I always used to see it closer to the manner in which the Americans do- as "thrifting". That somehow buying second hand clothes was demeaning, and made me "thrifty" with all its awful connotations and implications. 

My sister, on the other hand, has been at this game for years. She often comes home, laden with skirts and dresses, blouses and jackets, proudly announcing how little she paid for them. And these weren't bad looking pieces by any means; they were just nice, regular clothes, that you or me had passed on to the store, who later passed them on to Georgia for one tenth the original price. Funnily enough, probably one much closer to what the clothing chain would have purchased the clothes off the factories for. 

This leads me on to my next point, about sweat shops. Being in South-east Asia fairly regularly lately, I often had t shirts and pants thrust in my face by local shopkeepers, so desperate for that one sale. I don't even care that much that I am likely paying thrice what the local people do- to me, 30 000 dong makes hardly any difference. It is, after all, only $1:50. Something about "fake" clothes repels tourists like me, but especially where things like Chuck Taylors are concerned, how is "fake" any different really to "real". We all well know that Nike, and their subsidiary, Converse, are notorious for use of sweat shops, and what's more, the poor quality of their shoes, even when "real" means that there's virtually no difference in what I buy on a smelly backstreet in Hanoi, to what I pay twenty times as much for in my local Rebel Sport. 

Georgia and I recently took a séjour up to Nelson, anxious to escape the earthquake-ridden Christchurch. In town, and in the local settlement of Richmond, we went out armed with the goal of doing some successful opshopping in some new opshops. Georgia is well attuned to the entire process, and under her watchful eye, I managed to score a sweet corduroy jacket and a dress shirt for the grand total of $16:60- what a steal (and I mean that without sarcasm, for once).
 
I always imagined myself in my adult life, jet setting around the globe, of course being paid vast sums of money, and among other things, wearing only the finest clothing by Hugo Boss, Dior etc, but maybe I'll now have to revise this. Well, at least I'll surely still own a Breitling for each day of the week, seeing as though the $10 Bell&Ross that I picked up in Hué broke only two days after it was purchased.