Thrifty vintage store shopping for the fashionista

In today's economy it's hard enough to pay for gas and food, you don't need another thing, like clothes, bearing down on your wallet. At El Paisano we get it, that's why I literally scoured the entire county for months and months in search of the best thrift stores. By entire county I mean inner-Los Angeles and by months and months I mean a day or so. When rating these thrift stores I looked at two things essentially, quality of clothing and price of clothing.

People who are no strangers to thrift stores are well aware that some thrift stores have nothing but mounds of stained, torn clothing that are completely disorganized all over the place.

The places I'm going to mention, in no particular order, are not one of those places, except for the first one Society of St Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, in the sense that it's disorganized.

Society of St Vincent de Paul Thrift Store is located near Chinatown on 210 N Avenue 21
Los Angeles, CA 90031. Even though it's a bit disorganized the great selection of not only clothing but appliances and furniture more than makes up for their disorganization.

The clothing styles they range from today's style to vintage classics. The prices are great, most shirts are 4 to 10 dollars and rarely more than 15 dollars. The appliances and furniture are reasonablely priced they just need some tender love and care.

The second thrift store is the Out of the Closet in West Hollywood located on 360 N Fairfax Ave Los Angeles, CA 90036. Unlike most Out of the Closets, this one actually has a really good selection of basic tee's and cardigans not just shirts you could only wear as a joke or for a costume.

They don't have many vintage style clothing but most of the clothing is in good condition. Let's just say if your style is jeans and a shirt you can walk in naked (not legally) and walk out with clothing for a month because the prices are pretty cheap. If you take 20 bucks you can easily buy two shirts and a pair of jeans or skirt, if you're into that. I don't judge.

By far my favorite thrift store is the Goodwill in Hollywood on 1200 Vine St
Los Angeles, CA 90038. As the Smashing Pumpkins said "Cleanliness is Godliness", this Goodwill is organized like a regular department store.

This particular Goodwill has the best clothing however the prices even though they are still cheap they are not as cheap as those mentioned above.

The clothes are pretty fashionable you could find a fitted peacoat or some argyle sweaters for 20 through 30 dollars.

While all fashionista may have been reduced to a recessionista thanks to the economic down turn that doesn't mean LA's fashionable should suffer. The city's full of thrift and vintage stores so start hunting.