The designers who work to create the top end stuff either troll and/or send out crews to secondhand stores all the time, in search of inspiration. Kind of like pearl divers looking for treasure beneath the barnacles -sometimes you need to hold your breath for a while, but the payoff is pretty nice.
Three hints to help:
1)Bring hand sanitizer, no gloves because they deprive you of your most useful thrifting sense: touch. Somewhere, deep inside your reptilian brain knows what poly feels like vs. silk vs. a blendthis will get better with practice, but you already know what good clothes feel like.
2) I like to head for a section of the rack, then, making sure I am not going to injure another browser's hand, shove everything on it toward the end and pull pieces back towards me, quickly, one by one, with my eyes on the tag (for size and brand) and my fingers doing the walking for quality and texture as mentioned above. Once you see something you really like and it fits, look it over extremely carefully, near a window. Know what you're capable of fixing, and what would take tailoring - the price still might be right.
3) Look in other sections. This is not Nordstrom's: people have generally not been sorting for hours before. Also, bear in mind that thrifting can be very competitive. Meaning people will take stuff they think they might want and hide it where you can't get it. Or filch things out of your shopping cart while you're distracted by the wonders of your newly acquired rack-prowling expertise.
If you want to know more, we'll have it in the book...and it's up at Helium.
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