The Audacity of Buying Back Your Own Era

THE REFASHION JOURNAL · OBSERVATION 003

You wore it. You donated it. Someone photographed it on a better surface. Now you want it back.

There are few shopping experiences more personally offensive than finding something you used to own described as “rare.”

Rare? It was on your bedroom floor.

You remember the clasp. You remember the top you wore it with. You remember deciding, with the confidence available only to someone about to make a mistake, that you had moved on.

Now it is lying on a tasteful piece of travertine, being sold by someone who has apparently discovered your twenties.

The worst part is that it looks good.

Of course it looks good. It no longer comes attached to your old job, your terrible boyfriend or the photographs you hoped nobody had saved. Somebody has removed the circumstances and left the accessory.

You may have been too quick to get rid of the accessory.

Fashion, meanwhile, is happy to facilitate this reunion. Proenza Schouler has brought its PS1 back to the runway in a redesigned version, revisiting a bag first introduced in 2008. Another familiar face, looking well. Vogue reported its return on September 10.

You would congratulate it, but you are busy wondering what happened to yours.

There is a particular discomfort in watching a younger person discover something you remember without nostalgia. To her, it is a find. To you, it is something you once took off in a taxi because it was hurting your ears.

She has styled it with a plain white vest. You wore it with three other necklaces and a complicated relationship to layering.

She may have a point.

This is the part that bruises the ego. Someone else can see the thing clearly because she has never seen you wearing it. She has no memory of your fringe, your ambitions or the person you became briefly after moving to a particular postcode. She sees a good pair of earrings.

You see an entire social group you no longer speak to.

An accessory is small enough to survive a reinvention, but we often throw it out anyway. Moving house. Breaking up. Becoming someone who owns fewer things in better colors. There is usually a bin bag involved, and a feeling of moral superiority that lasts until you need something from it.

At the time, getting rid of it feels decisive. You are editing your life. You have taste now.

Years later, you are typing increasingly specific descriptions into a search bar.

“Silver chunky heart necklace toggle clasp.”

You remember everything except the brand.

Then you find it. Same shape. Same fastening. Slightly more expensive than your memory considers appropriate.

You send the link to a friend.

“I literally had this.”

It is both a complaint and a request for someone to stop you.

But what, exactly, would you be buying back?

Sometimes you miss the life around an object. The earring cannot arrange for your friends to live within walking distance again. The necklace will not restore the flat, the metabolism or the ability to go out on a Thursday without negotiating with Friday.

Sometimes, though, you simply miss the necklace.

You liked the weight of it. You liked what it did to a black shirt. You liked having something excessive near your face. These are perfectly adequate reasons to own something, even twice.

And wearing it again needn’t involve a full historical reconstruction. Your old earrings can meet your current clothes. You can leave the low-rise jeans wherever they are. Nobody is checking the accuracy of the period costume.

We should acknowledge our position here: we sell pre-owned accessories. We are hardly going to discourage a woman from reconsidering a very good necklace.

But there is something pleasing about a second encounter. The first time, perhaps you wanted the piece because everyone had it. This time, you know what you like about it. You also know whether the clasp catches your hair.

That is useful information. You earned it.

Buy it again if you want it. Wear it to lunch. Let it become part of an ordinary Tuesday instead of making it responsible for resurrecting your youth.

You can have the earrings back.

You don’t have to have the boyfriend.

Something worth wearing again

Two pieces for your current wardrobe. Previous life optional.

Cover image: AI-generated editorial illustration. The two product photographs show the actual pieces offered for sale.