It all started in the summer of '16

How becoming a mum changed everything I knew about (not) buying new.

It was 2016. In the height of an Australian summer, I became a mother for the first time.

I was immediately held hostage by a deliciously plump and hungry baby who was attached to my chest day and night for months on end. He hated the car and the pram.

So I took the baby everywhere with me. And I mean everywhere: the supermarket, fashion shows, change rooms, sit-down dinners, coffee with a girlfriend, the loo. He, snug in the baby carrier, our heartbeats synchronised.

Day naps involved me walking for miles and miles because my baby would only fall asleep on two conditions: we needed to be touching at all times and there would be stopping.

In hindsight, it would be idyllic and delightful to experience the closeness of a tiny beating heart again. But back then, it was suffocating, soul crushing and unexpectedly lonely. No one and nothing prepared me for the loneliness that motherhood brings.

Beads of sweat formed as I bounced my baby in the carrier all day long. Clusterfeeding would mercilessly give way to witching hour; sleepless nights would dissolve into sunrises. I’d be briefly greeted and rewarded by gummy smiles in the cot before we would hop on a merry-go-round of feeding (him) and dozing (both of us) for the rest of the day. They say when you’re raising a baby, the days are long but the years are short.

It’s so true.

I will never forget the fear that would settle in my stomach once the moon came out. I was terrified of not knowing whether I’d be up every hour again or if I’d be granted a rare and gloriously long stretch of sleep. Mercury always seemed to be in retrograde.

It would be years before I knew it, but it was the anxiety talking. It insidiously began as whispers. Knee deep in the trenches of dirty nappies and mealtime battles, I got good at ignoring the voices in my head. But eventually, they became louder and louder and so unbearable that I needed to get out of my head and out of the house.

With a baby strapped to me, we’d walk to the neighbourhood op shop. It became somewhat of a routine I looked forward to. The 2km route was undulating but beautiful if I looked hard enough. Sometimes it depended on the route, other times it was as simple as appreciating the small things: the cool breeze that grazed our cheeks, the sun light prickling our skin, the mesmerising clouds dancing across a clear blue sky. These walks became much like the experience of motherhood: there’s beauty everywhere you turn, but only if you care to look for it.

A pair of old Givenchy clip-on earrings I found at a local Anglicare op shop.

After one particular walk to the op shop, I found a honey-coloured Bianca Spender wool jacket. Subsequent weekly jaunts would uncover a Filipa K trench coat, worn-in Acne jeans (when they were still just ‘Acne’.) and pairs of vintage blue Levi’s, back when 501s still had single digit price tags at the oppies. Week after week, month after month, I was like an onion, unpeeling a new layer of identity and style by finding treasures through thrifting.

Rummaging through racks upon racks and getting lost in something that I just like freed me from the trends that algorithms and TikToks would try to sell me. It was all a pitiful mat leave budget would allow, anyway.

Little O rocking some pre-loved Osh Kosh overalls.

My little boy is now 8. We’ve moved away from the neighbourhood but every time I’m in the area, nostalgia hits me like a ton of bricks. My mind casts itself back to the summer of 2016. It retraces all the back streets we’d traverse to get to the local op shop —and get him to sleep. Some of the op shops are still there and some have moved on. But after all this time I still find unparalleled joy in the rummaging. The thrill of the find. Stumbling across a rose among the thorns. All the while perpetuating circularity in the current throwaway economy.

A vintage slip dress (ankle length) from the Save The Children oppie in South Freo.

Roughly 75% of my wardrobe (if not more) is now pre-loved - either from op shops, consignment stores or online marketplaces like Vestiaire. Most of my childrens’ toys, books, clothes and shoes are op-shopped. I think it’s important for them to realise that secondhand doesn’t mean second best.

I eventually checked into ‘grown-up’ therapy to overcome my postpartum anxiety. That’s a story for another day. But it was in that impenetrable fog of early motherhood that secondhand retail therapy ‘saved’ me. As I gave life to a new baby, it just so happened that other people’s old clothes would give me back mine.

It makes sense: sustainable fashion is known to come full circle.