About
Thrift File is a guide site for secondhand and vintage clothing. We write for people who want to buy fewer, better garments — who are willing to spend an afternoon in a charity shop or an hour in an online listing, but who want to know what they are looking at before they spend money on it.
What we cover
Every article starts from something you can check for yourself, not from a trend. The questions we keep returning to:
- How do you shop a thrift store efficiently, and what is worth checking before you get to the till?
- How can you tell whether a garment is genuinely old, and roughly how old, from its label, seams and fastenings?
- How do you judge condition — the difference between a flaw that is cosmetic and one that ends a garment’s life — before you pay?
- Why does vintage sizing fit so differently, and how do you work out fit when the size on the label means almost nothing?
- What does it take to wash, store and repair secondhand clothing so it stays in rotation?
- What makes a secondhand garment worth reselling, and what does not?
How we work
We write from construction and materials: what a seam, a fibre label, a care label or a zip tells you about a garment’s age and quality. Where we describe a rule of thumb — old garments tend to run small, certain fibres pill or felt — we say it is a tendency rather than a rule, because there are always exceptions.
We do not publish measurements, dates or values as if they were fixed facts. Fibre content, label standards and grading systems have changed repeatedly, and a garment’s condition matters more than any generalisation. Where something cannot be checked from the garment itself, we say so instead of dressing it up.
We do not use invented statistics, and we do not cite sources we have not read. Our writing is done by an editorial team rather than a named individual, so the site does not depend on one person’s credentials.
Corrections
Vintage is a field full of confident misinformation, and we will make mistakes. If something here does not match what you can see on the garment in front of you, tell us. Corrections are welcome, they are made promptly, and where a correction changes the substance of an article the change is noted in the article itself.
Funding
Thrift File is funded by advertising and by affiliate links to retailers. If you buy something through one of those links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Commission does not decide what we recommend. We do not publish sponsored reviews, we do not accept payment for coverage, and no brand or retailer has any say over what appears on this site. If a guide recommends against a product, a brand or a category, that recommendation stands whether or not there is money in the link. Affiliate links are marked as such where they appear.
Contact
Questions, corrections and article requests can be sent to editorial@thriftfile.com. We read everything, and we reply where a reply is useful. This address, like the rest of the site’s contact details, will change when the site moves to its permanent domain.