Most things in our house have belonged to someone else. Heirlooms, hand-me-downs, secondhand shop finds and treasures rescued from hard rubbish. Even my clothes are largely secondhand. It’s not just frugality that forces me to purchase like this. It’s also about the hunt. There’s a sort of buzz that comes from finding a bargain, from discovering something you know you couldn’t afford if it was new.
I come from a long line of bargain hunters, and early on, Mum taught me what to look for at markets and secondhand shops. After I moved out, we would often trawl the outer eastern suburbs together, for undiscovered pearls. It was our way to connect.
Many years ago, Mum and I were secondhand shopping together and she found a coat she thought I should buy because the French label was one Audrey Hepburn used to wear. Mum was a big fan and had introduced me to her movies, but my style at the time was less Hepburn and more Molly Ringwald. There was nothing about the coat that I liked. It was camel. It was faux suede. And it looked like something a grownup would wear.
But Mum was convincing. She told me I’d find a use for it one day, and for the bargain price of $10, I really couldn’t go wrong. I think it was her way of gently nudging my fashion choice in a different direction, because to her Hepburn was everything. Elegant, graceful and polished. I was about 20 and mostly wearing tiny clothes, not calf-length button-up coats. But I bought it anyway.
Years later, it still hangs in my wardrobe and it’s in perfect condition because Audrey may have worn it, but I never have. Usually I cull things when I haven’t worn them but I’ve dragged this coat with me from house to house, year to year, and the only reason I can think of is that after Mum died 10 years ago, anything she was a witness to became more valuable to me.
Sometimes I sell my clothes in a recycled boutique near my house. I don’t take the money because the credit is worth more, so I use that to find new things to wear, turning over my wardrobe every few months without spending a dime.
In need of new jeans, I dig through my clothes looking for things the shop might buy. I find the coat and decide I’ve held on to it long enough, so I dump it into my basket with some other possible suspects and carry them across the road.
While the staff examine my clothes, I look for jeans on the rack. All the pairs in my size are baggy-legged, like those my children wear, and not what I am after. While I’m browsing, I notice one of the staff trying on the coat and the other photographing it.
Finally the store manager, who used to keep Garfield comics for my son in the secondhand shop she worked at, tells me the coat is worth nearly $1,100. I start laughing, thinking she’s mucking around. She’s not. Giggling and slightly overwhelmed, I tell her the origin story.
She offers me half what they can sell it for in credit. I am stunned. This is designer money and would buy me many pairs of jeans.
But suddenly I’m reaching for the coat. Now that I know it’s so valuable, I can’t leave it behind. Not because I like it any more than I did before, but because this means Mum was right. Audrey Hepburn might have worn it. And if it was good enough for her, then perhaps it’s good enough for me. Mumbling an apology, I place it back into my basket, more carefully than I did before.
At home, I try the coat on, eager to see Audrey Hepburn as I spin in front of my daughter’s floor-to-ceiling mirror. Perhaps at 20, I didn’t know my style, but I do now. I have never worn camel, and this coat is not going to change that. It’s true that I am sentimental about things Mum once owned. I have her black knee-high leather 1960s boots that haven’t fitted me since I was 15, her wedding dress that will only zip up if I have my ribs removed and a tunic made of Time magazine newspaper she wore many years ago. I keep them because even if I never wear them, her sense of style is sewn into their fabric.
But the coat is different. It was never worn by her.
A couple of weeks later, I decide it’s time to let it go and I fold it up and take it back to the shop. The manager is apologetic. I’m too late. They aren’t buying for winter any more. The days are getting longer, the seasons are changing, the sun’s out! They are after spring clothes now.
It looks like the coat is coming home to live with me for another year.
• Nova Weetman is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults, including The Edge of Thirteen, winner of the Abia award 2022.
