Will This Be My Ultimate Demise?

A new, terrible era in my online shopping life has begun. One where any remaining iota of self-restraint has been completely banished, where there is an uneasy sense that the person at the helm of the Good Ship Buyalot (me) is, in fact, deeply unhinged. It’s a bit like that scene where Scar takes his place at Pride Rock (Lion King reference, keep up): you can almost see the skies darkening, the hyenas circling, the vultures swooping in. For I have discovered the Vinted app and it is surely going to lead to my ultimate demise.

Perhaps not financially, because almost everything I look at on Vinted seems to be (inexplicably) priced at either four pounds or six and I very rarely actually buy anything, but if I carry on using the app at my current rate (approximately one third of the working day) then I will almost definitely become malnourished, jobless and completely estranged from my entire family by the time the calendar flips over to 2025.

How have I not taken Vinted seriously before now? Was it because I’d been scrolling through the listings aimlessly - amateur! - watching creased, soiled garment after creased, soiled garment flick across the screen in front of my eyes and feeling progressively more and more disheartened? Here, an Isabel Marant dress so stained it looks like the Turin Shroud; there a pair of Louboutin heels “with no red soles left and missing a buckle otherwise very good condition”.

I have to admit that my early forays into Vinted left me feeling depleted and slightly nauseous. Seasick. Scrolling so fast through the listings that I’d start to feel dizzy and my eyes would blur, I’d wonder why I was putting myself through it. You have to be a certain kind of person to be able to successfully bargain-hunt, to have the stamina to find that one diamond in the rough, to go through three or four hundred dresses that have been photographed on ever-worsening backgrounds. An All Saints dress hung up in front of a mouldy shower curtain. A Topshop kaftan draped over an uncleared dining table, ketchup-smeared plates still in situ. A Mint Velvet sequinned mini, shot from above on a rain-sodden tarmacadam driveway.

I am not that kind of person and I don’t have the stamina. What I do have, however, is quite a laser-sharp shopping focus when it comes to finding that “one thing” that my wardrobe is missing. (The fact that I tend to find a missing thing at least every month is inconvenient, but surely at some point the job will be done? The capsule edit will be complete, perfected, and there will be a (comfy) outfit for every occasion?)

It might be a pair of slouchy black leather boots that I’m after, or a tweed pencil skirt, a masculine blazer or a houndstooth coat: once I’ve imagined myself in this garment I cannot rid my mind of the mental images that ensue. The houndstooth coat worn with jeans and trainers, or perhaps shoulder-robed over the top of a sequinned dress. Me in Paris (when do I ever go to Paris?!) striding through the Marais with my beret on and - you’ve guessed it - the houndstooth coat; me sitting outside a cool New York deli with my houndstooth coat draped artfully over one arm, sipping coffee from a cool coffee cup made from recycled coffee bean husks.

I DON’T EVEN DRINK COFFEE! I’VE NEVER HAD A COFFEE IN MY LIFE!

(This is my problem with fashion and with dressing myself in general: I am totally unrealistic and I dress for an entirely different life to the one I actually lead. I dress for a person who doesn’t even exist. This all needs a longer post and a big discussion, but it is truly the root of all my time-wasting fashion forays.)

Anyway, yes. I have this laser-sharp shopping focus once I’ve got an essential wardrobe addition fixated into my mind, and once I’d discovered the search filters on Vinted, and that I could eliminate 90% of the unsuitable items in one fell swoop, I realised that there was this whole new universe of fashion-buying open to me. No longer was I restricted to the latest trends and “new drops” in the online stores: if I wanted a houndstooth coat then the world was my proverbial oyster. I could get an M&S number from last season (“bought this and changed my mind”) or a Max Mara one from the nineties. Pure wool, cashmere, belted, oversized, the options were endless.

And this is why Vinted is so very addictive. You could be thrown three hundred items that match your search for “pink pussy bow blouse” and lose half an hour just trying to cross-check the best results on Google Lens. (Have you done this yet? You click the camera icon in the Google search bar and then upload a photo and Google will find matching results. Brilliant if, for example, there’s a dress you’ve seen but you don’t know how it’ll look on because the sales listing only has it hung on a coat hanger. Or if it’s a pair of sunglasses and you can’t tell for the life of you whether they’re an oversized style or petite and neat. I have my friend and chief enabler Sam Chapman to thank for this particular tip, though I’m pretty sure I’m very late to the party.)

And then the pricing - this is what makes Vinted even more addictive. I mean things aren’t universally bargainous, but more often than not items I look at are a teeny, tiny fraction of the brand new buying price. I’ve had a pure wool Jigsaw skirt for four quid, in perfect condition (pictured above), a Roberto Cavalli silk high-necked blouse (that makes me look like Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen but never mind) for less than an M&S jumper and am currently procrastinating over a whole plethora of different silk shirts, wool coats and cashmere belted coatigans.

Absolutely in my element.

Of course the downside to all of this is that you can’t return anything and, if you sit between two sizes (I do, a UK10 and a 12), it can be a real time drain trying to double-guess whether the trousers you’ve ordered will be baggy at the knees and forever falling down or too tight on the arse and garrotting you in the nethers.

So yes. Labour intensive. But who can resist favouriting a Givenchy blouse in pristine condition that’s less than fifty pounds? Have I bought it? No I have not. The colour wouldn’t suit me. But it’s in my favourites folder nevertheless, just because it would be rude for it not to be. What an utter delight to see such treasure being passed on and re-treasured by somebody new. Re-loved.

I must go. I’ve just had seventeen different email alerts (another downside, must look to see if I can turn these notifications off) from sellers offering me their wares for even less money - a bouclé skirt reduced from twelve pounds to ten, a YSL dress with fifteen pounds off. It’s as though the app is infiltrating my mind. I must sit in a dark room and procrastinate over these new offers, scroll through the items again and again and imagine myself wearing them in all kinds of scenarios that will never, ever happen and then fail to buy anything at all because I’m worried about not being able to return it…

It is time. Vinted beckons. And I have apparently yet to experience the joys of Vestiaire, which at a quick glance looks like the Harvey Nichols website just with all the zeros taken off the prices by accident…

Will I make it out of this alive? Tell me in the comments: are you a Vinted convert? Am I so late to the party that you’re all shaking your heads sadly at me, having left already for the much cooler house party up the road, the one that goes on until 4am and has a DJ that’s this totally uhmazing guy who’s in his second year at Central St Martin’s? Speak to me.

*And please excuse the styling in the photos here. This isn’t how I’d ideally wear my new pure wool Jigsaw skirt (FOUR POUNDS), I was taking a photo of the roll-neck top. Which is actually a bodysuit. I’m testing it out to see whether I can recommend it, but first need to give it some time to find out just how irritating the gusset part is.