The Empress of Thrift as Goodwill Ambassadress to New York City

The Empress of Thrift is on assignment to the Goodwill stores in Manhattan this week. She will look something like this. Wish me luck and good shopping.

Goodwill: The Good, the Bad and the Tawdry

Yes, you had me at tawdry. I meant to post this for Valentine's Day, but lost momentum. Okay, you've sensed it, I confess! I cheated on Valentine's Day. I went to a secret assignation while my husband was flyfishing. I'm weak and I want to come clean. I drove to a non-descript motel and met Sebastian in a small room with no windows. But here's the rub -- Sebastian was just not that into me. I could tell because he kept scratching to get out the door. He wouldn't look me in the eye. And the worst of it was, he wouldn't even wag his little long-haired dachshund tail. I gave him back to the shelter volunteer and he jumped in her arms. It wasn't meant to be. Was I overly eager? I wore my best red and white dachshund sweater. Did I seem too needy? I sang songs from Phantom of the Opera off key. Did he know about Elvis and Gidget? They had shed all over me before I met him. In the end, it's always about chemistry, and Sebastian and I were like two inert substances not meant to spark. Now all I can do is think of his pointy face and hum that song from The Way We Were. Pathetic.
  Chemistry is a fickle thing. Sometimes I think it's there when I buy things from Goodwill, and later it turns out it was chemistry -- I was low on meds that day. Here are three things that later turned out to be prizes, booby prizes and shameful closet secrets.
  The first is a $2 tie rack I had been searching for to hang my necklaces. It works like a dream.

The second is a pink shirt I bought because the embroidery was so well done. The Peptobismal shade is bad with my pale freckled skin, and I hate V necks on me. But the French knot embroidery was so good it belonged on an antique sampler. Not on me.

The third is the tawdry. There's a place for tawdry, and not just in Amsterdam's Red Light District or Mariah Carey's closet. Dolly Parton once said It costs alot to look this cheap." She was wrong, it only cost $5 at Goodwill. This is a fun one because you can wear it under something very sensible and feel like you are cheating, even if you're not visiting a dog at the pound on the sly.

Mantra for the day: Frugal is Such a Sexy Word

 As a member of royalty (like Dame Edna), I have to be be mindful of "my public" at all times. I feel some noblesse oblige to impart bits of wisdom to my two followers. So Lesson no. 1, courtesy of Mr. Alonzo R., a 95 year old Southern gentleman who taught me to count offering at church by using the Sum of the Digits method invented by a WWII concentration camp survivor, Jakow Trachtenberg (See the Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics). I reckon y'all should know that it ain't the sum of your digits, it's the way you put them digits together, which leads us to Lesson No. 2: It's not how much it costs, but how high it ranks on the 1-10 Fabulosity Scale (1 being Britney Spears on a bad hair day - 10 being Audrey Hepburn on any day. In short, my motto is: 

Now, fabulosity is such a subjective concept. For example, to The Empress, this sweater was the most amazingly fabulous thrift find on Monday at the Pick of the Litter store. Imagine, a recent Anthropologie sweater WITH TAGS,  for $5.00. Here's the sum of the digits analysis -- ANTHROPOLOGIE + NEW TAGS + LONG ENOUGH  FOR TALL PERSON + COTTON + DOGS + RUFFLES + NAVY BLUE + DOGS + THRIFT = 11. But for a theoretical person who will not be named here but who fathered my fabulous children and tolerates dogs but not when they have "accidents" in the house, the analysis added up to a negative number, expressed as "Isn't that sweater too long for you?" Translation: "That sweater is an unholy abomination and don't blame me if you find it buried in the compost heap while you're not looking." As if that would ever stop the Empress from her quest for Fabulosity.

Frugal is a sexy word because when you buy frugal, you can afford to make mistakes on the road to the Kingdom of Fabulosity. Just check your addition of the digits on the way.

Beyonce' Creates Theme Song for Goodwill Campaign Against Exes

That's right, you've heard it  in your car and while shopping for holiday Peeps at Walgreens:
To the left, to the left

Everthing you own in the box to the left

In the closet, that's my stuff

Yes, if I bought it then please don't touch. 

To put the kibosh on all the treacle surrounding Valentine's Day, Goodwill Keystone Area did Beyonce' one better, and created the "Dump Your Exes Stuff" campaign.

     I love that Keystone Goodwill is clear that it will NOT accept your ex's weapons, dehumidifiers, kerosene lanterns or mattresses (ew). They must know their constutuency. And we all have exes. Exes are not limited to men and women and pet crocodiles who turned on us or failed to live up to our dreams (Mr. Hyde, could you just put me through to Dr. Jekyll  now?) , but also include lemon cars, tetchy computers and leather pants that let us down. If you have ever bought an outfit only because it was a bargain, you probably ended up with an an albatross that made your ass look like it was on an IMAX screen.  What you need to do is break up with that outfit, and breaking up is hard to do. Cue the Everly Bros... Bye, bye love...

     Allow me to serve as a cautionary tale for all my subjects. I have had multiple break-ups with purchases, and I'm here to share. Hello, my name is the Empress, and I'm a clothing slut, I buy 'em and I leave 'em. Here is an embarrassing photo of all the stuff I bought one time. I even put brand labels on cards on some items for the photo! (What next, scrapbooking? Save me!)  I made these things think I cared for them. I washed them, hung them, wore them. And within a year, I threw them over ...  into a Goodwill bag (even the Rainbow Brite MaxMara skirt). I was cold, callous and unfeeling, but I am the Empress, and sometimes heads must roll and pink mohair coats must find someone who cares: "It's not you, pink mohair coat, it's me."

Other broken-hearted rejects from my closet:

Be kind, if you don't love it, set it free.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantalones

  Hola'. There, now I have used up 2 of the 14 Spanish words I know. I am ashamed to live in California and not speak Spanish. But I took four years of Latin, and hand me some Ovid and I'm your girl. Not really, I only know one phrase in Latin, but it's a useful one: "Semper ubi sub ubi." Translation: "Always wear underwear." Good advice, the kind of advice a big sister might have given me in second grade before I launched myself on the monkey bars. Sisters are supposed to be good at that kind of thing, but here's the rub: I never had a sister. I had three brothers, so I spent a fair amount of time faking injuries and watching them get punished. Perhaps this is why I like the movie Reservoir Dogs so much. So much blood.

  But you don't need blood ties for a sister (and you don't need dorky make-believe traveling pants that fit all four friends even before America Ferrera lost all that weight and got Ugly Betty cancelled.) One of my brothers married the Duchess of Fort Bragg, and she is a master thrift shopper. Here is a belt she bought recently (the top and jeans are also thrift):

  Here's one thing I know for sure. If I had a sister, and she shopped with me at Goodwill, she NEVER would have let me buy this little wench number. My sister would have had a cool name like Laramie or Patti Smith, and she would have seen this number and laughed a throaty laugh and said, "Who do you think you ARE buying that thing? An Empress of a Second-Rate Renaissance Faire? A waitress at Gulliver's? A puppet in a It's a Small World ride? Stop embarrassing me and  put all that dachshund crap down before we get to the register. Ahhhhh, sisterhood.