My sophomore year in high school, my best friend and I got the grand idea to start our own vintage clothing boutique. It was prompted by a mandatory project, but we wanted to create something different from the myriad of plain poster presentations. We set out to complete a project that was not only beneficial to our community, but also something that was a joy, not a chore, to create and carry out.
Our weekly outings to the dingy local thrift store with no dressing room, where we tried on shorts under maxi skirts three sizes too big, originally didn’t seem to be more than a place for us to find unique clothes at ridiculously cheap prices.
The afternoons we spent cutting boy’s Levi’s into high-waisted denim shorts and hemming shirts into crop tops were always too fun to feel like work – the Arcade Fire record playing in the background, eating bowls of Ben & Jerry’s and complaining about boys as we sorted through the plastic shopping bag full of $2 jeans, massive dresses and quirky t-shirts made the event too casual to be a transferrable job skill.
But we decided to try doing what we did for fun–updating thrifted clothing into pieces we would actually wear–into a job, if just for a few weeks. We created an Etsy shop, a calendar of deadlines for the project to make sure we would have sold clothes by the culmination of the project in the spring. We meticulously kept track of how much we spent on materials, tried to fairly price all of the shorts, skirts, scrunchies and accessories, advertised our “brand,” Threads, on Facebook and Instagram, and got to work making clothes not just for ourselves as we avoided homework, but for ‘work.’
Thinking back on that spring of my sophomore year, I realize that was probably my dream job. Of course, it wasn’t a real job, (the location of the ‘boutique’ where we ended up selling the clothes to our friends was her parents’ basement) but if it were to be a real job, I’d definitely sign myself again in a heartbeat.
I spent hours with my best friend, doing what we probably would have spent the afternoon doing anyways. I had the freedom to be creative and mess around, and I always had my best friend at my side if I ever hacked off two inches too many of a skirt’s hem or needed to know if a dress I thought we could sell was ugly or cute. And I even got to go shopping regularly in the name of new inventory!
Honestly, the hardest part was having to be responsible for the entire project. I remember wishing repeatedly that someone would hold me accountable for the deadlines we had set, or a superior had more clearly outlined what steps would lead to a most successful end project. Selling clothing online was a hassle neither of us had realized we had signed ourselves up for, and advertising was always done so last-minute it was practically too late.
When we finally opened our pop-up boutique, after dozens of friends and family browsed through the racks of our clothes, we had made nearly $500 for a local charity in an afternoon, and also proved to ourselves that we were capable of carrying out a project from start to finish that we didn’t dread.
It may have been a little on the early side, but this experience gave me truly helpful insight into what I want in a workplace. Regardless of whether or not I can ever do something similar to this in my professional career, I hope it can be filled with supportive coworkers (or best friends), a laid-back atmosphere, and creativity–with a good dose of structure mixed in, too.