Interpreting Anna Sui’s true blue fall style with vintage and thrift finds is easy, you just have to know what to look for.

When confronting the barrage of fashion’s endless micro trends, it’s tempting to head for the safety of your style comfort zone, whether it’s leggings and tees or the dress that never fails you. Having a collection of wardrobe staples that you look and feel great in is half the war of looking good.

But like in life, standout style can only evolve when we are willing to feel awkward when trying something new. So if the fashion thrill is gone, start experimenting – it’s what makes fashion fun. The best way to do this if you’re eco-minded, or a style lover who can’t bear to look like everyone else, is interpret the latest runway trends with vintage and thrift finds. It’s cheaper than buying mass market fashion and prevents those items from ending up in the landfill.

Here are our picks for five items that can be found in abundance in vintage and thrift stores and – luckily for you and the planet – are enduring fall styles.

Isabel Marant’s Oversized Coat

The Oversized Coat –  Big is beautiful this fall, with cocoon-shaped, oversized coats seen on Isabel Marant, Jil Sander and Kenzo’s runways. If you buy one thing from a thrift store this year make it fall’s must-have silhouette for outerwear. Typically, secondhand men’s coats are a miss for their boxy, sloped shoulder style – this season those elements are bang on. Balance the look with slim cigarette pants and add a belt if you feel too swamped.

Reed-Krakoff’s chunky oversized sweater

The Chunky Knit Sweater –  The emphasis on big continues with cozy, comfortable cable knits. If you can find a chunky cable knit, particularly from an American heritage brand – grab it, you’ll be in good company with Michael Kors, Missoni and Reed Krakoff who showed off their statement making knits on fall runways.

Balmain blazer with gold buttons

The Navy Blazer – Synonymous with country living and boating activities, the classic blue blazer with brass buttons is enjoying a revival as a high contrast piece to wear with more casual looks. Flung insouciantly over shoulders like a trench coat, you’ve just upped the ante on preppy style.

Anna Sui’s blue on blue detail

Anything Blue – Forget shades of grey, this season the new neutral is blue. The monochrome look will continue for fall, with fresh-looking shades of blue layered upon with the occasional hint of black. Another way to interpret this trend is the denim-on-denim look, stock up on denim shirts, and denim vests in a soft blue hue to make pairing with dark-washed jeans a more dressed up look.

Jason Wu’s Army inspired jacket

The Army Jacket – This season is definitely military minded, but more relaxed than in past revisits. An epaulette here, a spot of camouflage there – achieving this look is all in the details rather than sporting a full on uniform. Thanks to designer’s ongoing plundering of the theme, expect to find options galore in your local consignment store.

The post 5 Fall Fashion Trends to Thrift Right Now appeared first on EcoSalon.

Wool and the Gang’s DIY knit kits allow you to be the designer.

In October 2007, Wool and the Gang Co-Founder Lisa Sabrier became fed up with mass consumption and decided “to transmit traditional values to her children and grandchildren,” figuring that it was important to have a conscience while still living life to its fullest. As an avid scuba diver, windsurfer, and skier, another way she knew she could channel her love for exploring environment was through a a fashion lens where she could explore her affection for proportion and shape.

Around the same time, Co-founder Carolyn Main was tapping into her own passion for the thread while knitting in front of a fire in the Swiss Alps. Forever an adventurer with a penchant for travel and the need to witness other cultures first-hand, Main says she still sees travel “as a way for people to discover, or re-discover, the skill of hand-knitting,” based on the strength of the craft.

Joining forces, the two created Wool and the Gang, featuring seasonal capsule collections that fit with ease into any wardrobe based on how one wears them. In addition to buying the pieces straight out, you can also opt to buy a kit which includes knitting needles, soft Peruvian yarns and easy to understand patterns to create your own design. Never picked up a pair of knitting needles in your life? The gang also offers video tutorials on different stitches as well as in-store knitting classes. Take the easy way out and buy the completed designs here.

There are the women that drive business and then there are the artists behind it. WATG’s creative design team hails from the houses of Balmain, Colette, and Alexander McQueen, and collectively encapsulate everything that is industry cool from experience not only in reputable design houses but from the music and textile industry. Here are some styles they’ve recently designed you can pick up at either Wool and the Gang or at Kaight.

Tala Tank, $100

The Diana Sweater, $179

Sexy Back Sweater, $189

Mary Sweater, $179

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Fashion’s royal court is only for a small percentage of Americans with royal salaries.

One has only to look at last night’s Oscar results for The King’s Speech to see that when it comes to royalty we are smitten. But where we cheer for stuttering kings and their noble supporting cast, new-found love and endearing visions of the past, do we really need a new court?

“Fashion is royalty,” a friend said to me over dinner last week in New York.

Is it possible that the most consumer-driven part of our society could seriously be considered royalty? And do we really want to consider the most irresponsible of our designers the new court’s kings and queens?

My friend may be on to something. How many stories did we have to endure over New York Fashion Week detailing obsessive information about what courtesan celebrities were wearing in the front row to see their noble (king or queen) designer? Humbly though they sat to admire the breathtaking fantasies from legends like Karl Lagerfeld, Versace and Tomas Maier of Bottega Veneta, we undoubtedly heard (or maybe cared) less about the looks coming down the catwalk as the star-studded sidelines.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article that peeks inside the closets of those rarefied shoppers of fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan, the world’s most expensive clothes may only be made for those with royal salaries. “But many of the runway styles are actually purchased by a small group of customers, not all of them from the isle of Manhattan. And unlike celebrities and socialites, who often get designer clothes at no charge in exchange for publicity, these customers pay full price,” says WSJ writer Elizabeth Holmes.

Is this the royalty my friend, a struggling young designer, is referencing? Yes.

A rereading of this fairy tale might encourage us to ask why fashion’s royal court is being led by people purchasing clothes with heavily gilded price tags. A Balmain gold mini-dress at $74,000? Especially in a still-tepid economy, such displays are garish. The era of bling bling and logomania among the peasants may have abated in step with the financial times, but decadent fashion still wears its crown.

Fashion is royalty, she reiterates. Heady, worked up and a little intoxicated, she glares and says, “Ha! You’re just like a peasant with the clothes you love,” and takes a conclusive sip.

Indeed I am, and in fact, we all are. What comes down the catwalk and drives fashion magazine editorials is not the ready-to-wear, (much less the mass-produced fast fashion that will show up in stores in the months after fashion weeks), it’s the thin slice for the royals and their royalty. This can be confusing for the average American fashion consumer, seeing the gaudy and glamorous creations of fashion week and the fantastical spreads soon after in glossy publications. Is this a level of fashion the typical consumer can ever attain? Yet this is what drives fashion, and all young designers must visit the high design courts to pay homage to those patrons on whom their success hinges. Whether they want to or not.

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