Scrolling through TikTok the other day, I heard a distinctly Kardashian voice posing a question: “Honestly, who can say they don’t want to be tan?” Uncovering the original audio proved it was Khloé in her confessional on one of the earlier seasons of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The audio then shifts to Kim and Kourtney, who go on to talk about the merits of a good fake tan.

On this point, I can relate to the Kardashians. While our natural complexions are very different — them, Armenian; me Irish and one teeny-tiny fraction Italian — I too feel more confident when my skin reads half a shade darker than normal and I magically see subtle definition I didn’t know I could have.

Of course, the importance of sun protection cannot go unstated, so I only do the fake stuff. On my body, I’ll try different brands based on good reviews. Recently, I’ve been using a Sugared & Bronzed mousse: I apply it with a mitt at night before bed and shower it off the next morning. The tan is very subtle, but noticeable, and will stick around for four days or a long weekend if I remember to keep moisturized, especially on my chest and ankles. On my face, however, it’s been challenging to find the right serum that doesn’t look orange or patchy. Then, based on rave Sephora reviews, I found Tan-Luxe Hyaluronic Acid Super Glow Serum.

The product name is a mouthful, but the HA mention is what hooked me. My skin is super dry and reacts really well to hyaluronic acid. With the Super Glow serum, instead of adding a step to my skin-care routine, I just mix a few drops in with another serum I like, SkinCeuticals H.A. Intensifier, and then press the blend into my skin. I let it all “sink in” for a few minutes and then I’ll add my Victoria Beckham x Augustinus Bader moisturizer over top and then Supergoop Glowscreen or Saie Slip Tint SPF 35. About an hour later, my skin is still dewy and a tiny bit tan. I like the resulting color and finish so much that I usually won’t even put on any face makeup, maybe just tinted lip balm and mascara.

I asked NYC-based dermatologist Hadley King, MD, to peek at the serum’s ingredient list and get to the bottom of why this particular self-tanner was such a good match for me. Beyond the active dihydroxyacetone (DHA), which delivers the color, there are other properties that make the serum well-suited for dry skin.

“This serum also contains humectants to hydrate the skin, as well as a few oils that have emollient and occlusive properties to support the skin barrier and help to lock in moisture,” Dr. King explains. The oil composition might not be the best option for someone with especially oily or acne-prone skin; a self-tanner with a touch of glycolic or lactic acid would help to minimize the risk of clogged pores. “However, if you have normal to dry skin,” Dr. King says (and mine is the latter, especially heading into fall-winter), “this formulation may work really well for you.”

At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.

 

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As a string of celebrities made their way down the red carpet at The 2021 MTV Video Music Awards, Twitter lit up with real-time commentary regarding the fashion on display. Among the varied 'ooh's and 'ahh's was a distinct voice of authority pointing out that the looks lacked a modern point of view: “No more references or homages please. Our eyes are starving for fresh perspective/dress. We won’t have any decade-defining style for the roaring ‘20s…if we keep rewearing ‘90s and Y2K things.” Behind the tweets was Shelby Ivey Christie, a fashion and costume historian who regularly shares her encyclopedic knowledge with her 43,000-plus followers, delving into the oft-overlooked contributions of Black creators while weighing in on modern-day cultural touchpoints with equal aplomb.

From intricately laid baby hairs and glittering acrylic nails to the overlooked designs of folks like Ann Lowe and Zelda Wynn Valdes, the systematic sidelining and appropriation of Black cultural contributions has been well-documented — a fact that makes Christie’s work all the more urgent and necessary. “You can be in a continual cycle of anger and agitation because every day, every week, there's somebody copying something that we’ve done,” she says. In partnership with Target, we talked to the fashion historian about her early forays into the industry, the challenges of her work, and why the method matters just as much as the message.

What are some of your formative fashion memories?

“Costume and film was my segue into loving fashion early on. I love stories and storytelling, but it was really the costume design that drew me to fashion. My mom has a really distinctive style, very androgynous — I have a love of structured pieces because of her. My grandma was a very well-dressed woman, dressed to the nines for church. My first job was working as an assistant to my hairstylist. Looking at magazines [catered to Black women] once the customers were done with them and seeing models that look like me wearing high-end looks and participating in fashion made a really early impression on me.”

How did you begin plotting your path toward a career in fashion?

“I got into college at North Carolina A&T State University as a fashion merchandising major because I was the fashion kid in my family. At the time, I had a boyfriend who went to North Carolina Central University and was a history major. He focused specifically on Black history and he would talk to me about what he was studying and it was so interesting to me. I changed my major to history, but then I missed my fashion — in history, they don't talk about costume or clothes as a historical form of documentation. So I said, ‘Okay, I'm going to leave school until I can figure out what I want to do.’ I ended up not going back until I was 21 to finish as a Race, Class, and Culture major under the history discipline.”

How did your magazine internships and work history inform your view of the fashion industry?

“Navigating the fashion industry as a Black woman was not always easy for me. It was easy to feel out of place or like my voice did not matter in certain spaces. At the time, editorial teams were downsizing because print was not the primary form of communicating fashion. These big budget editorials were going away and these legacy publishers were trying to adjust to that. I work in the business side of luxury fashion now, and that's what [that change in the industry] pushed me to do.”

How did you remain in touch with your love of fashion history while holding down various fashion-related 9-to-5s?

“I was in a capacity where brands are my clients. So you cannot go on Twitter and talk about a brand’s show or critique the runway because it's a conflict of interest. I would talk about these things amongst my friend group, but it wasn't until Ieft to go to [a beauty corporation] three years ago that I really started pumping out my content and being able to talk about it a lot.”

What are the difficulties of unearthing Black fashion history?

“It can be quite challenging and labor-intensive. And sometimes it can be emotional. Sometimes you have to do as much digging as you can, and then you get to a point where there's so much misattribution that even if you find a source, how do you verify that source? Art and history and academia didn't value [Black creativity] enough to treat it with the same kind of care and documentation.”

How do you balance the necessity of shining a spotlight on Black creativity with the frustration that comes along with Black creativity being appropriated for profit?

“Ownership is so important, but it's two-pronged. You have to focus on properly attributing what’s already out there and call people out when it's not done right, but we have to start thinking about what we can do in the present to make sure it doesn't happen [in the future]. ​​

“A lot of our knowledge is shared communally with each other — that is a Black thing — and then in an attempt to be generous with each other, now our methods are on the internet and our white counterparts can now profit off of them. What can we do today as a preventative measure? That's something that we're still trying to figure out.”

As you work on obtaining your master’s degree in costume history for NYU, how do you hope your work will evolve?

“As corny as it sounds, I just want to stay true to myself. Even in my approach to sharing content, my goal is always to make it accessible because I'm not a very academic person. If I have to read a text or a passage for school, I have to read it four or five times. The vernacular is just not accessible. I want to be able to filter that to my audience. If I want Black people and a wide range of audiences to know this information, I want it to be interesting to them. So I'm going to use my regular AAVE. I'm Southern, so you're going to hear my y'alls. I'm going to use my memes. I'm going to cut up. I wanna laugh. I want it to be fun. That's what I try to hold onto.”

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When would you say you noticed that you were having feelings of anxiety that were a little more intense than they should be?

College was when it started getting noticeable for me. I’ve always been an anxious person. My parents would readily confirm that. And I’m a perfectionist, which is a bedfellow of anxiety. But, when I was in college, I was trying to do so much. And, I was really at a loss for how to handle the many commitments I had. My parents were getting a divorce. My weight was up and down. Oh, and I got out of a long-term relationship. (I lowkey forgot I was with him for almost two years.) I think those were triggers but where the mistake came in was doing a self-diagnosis of all of these things as leading to situational anxiety, which is different from chemical anxiety.

I started having panic attacks in college. A couple. They were not frequent and they’re still not frequent. But, when I started having them I just took it all as ‘I’m a stressed-out college student. I’m carrying a big course load.’ I was [on the executive board for] the National Association of Black Journalists. I had a job and I was trying to do a lot of stuff.

What was your first panic attack like? Where were you; what was going on?

I think my first panic attack happened junior year of college…

Which was the craziest year.

Yeah. It was incredibly hectic. There was a lot of personal and school-related stuff going on. I just remember a lot of crying. Most likely I was at my apartment. To this day, the panic attacks haven’t changed so much. They’re a lot of hyperventilating, crying, and an inability to calm down. It’s like the world sort of closes in and I don’t see a way out. Your ability to think or see beyond a few seconds is gone. And then trying to calm yourself down, usually doesn’t work because you’re setting up the expectation, ‘I should be calm. Why am I not calm?’ And for me, that leads to me feeling like there is something wrong with me.

Were you by yourself?

Yeah.

So, what did you do?

I think the first time, I probably called my mom, which I still do sometimes, and have her talk me through it. But, I think I also tried to talk to my roommate at the time and that was more or less successful.

Did you have the language to articulate what was going on? What did you say to them?

‘I’m freaking out. I’m just feeling so overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do. I can’t calm down.’ Oh, you know what? I just remembered. The way that this really started building in junior year—sometimes the body holds stress in certain places. And, for me, that becomes my throat. And, I started freaking out because when I would get stressed, which was often, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So, I went to the student health center and I told them, ‘It feels like there’s a lump in my throat. It hurts to swallow. It feels like it’s stressing my breathing.’ And, everybody looked at me like I was crazy. They were like, ‘You’re fine.’ They ran whatever basic test they needed to do, looked down my throat. But nothing really happened.

So [that experience] was part of a lifelong habit of minimizing whatever I was going through. I think I was like, ‘Everybody thinks I’m making this up or overreacting.’ So, I talked to my mom and my roommate and thought that would be the end of it.

It started getting bad because senior year, I was probably even more stressed and at that point, my roommate, who was my best friend at the time, had transferred to another school. So, I was feeling kind of isolated senior year. I was alone but by that point, I knew what was going on. So, I was able to keep it to myself and just hang in my room, lie down, and just kind of breathe through it. By that point, the throat pains had stopped but I was still getting upset and a lot of crying and feeling very burdened by everything I had to do.

So, I went to the Student Health Center and told them what was going on and I saw a nurse practitioner who immediately put me on the generic version of Zoloft. She put me on about 40 mg a day, which, for a controlled substance, is a pretty high amount to start off with. I now know but at the time I was 21 and had no idea what she was doing to me. I had to take that 1-2 times a day and it made me crazy! I went from being anxious and just kind of easily upsettable to paranoid. And, I had no idea what was going on. I only took it for a week but that week was insane. I didn’t eat. I completely lost my appetite.

It was a box of crackers, I’ll never forget this. There were three packages wrapped in a box. I ate one of those packages over the course of six days. I couldn’t handle it. I would try to eat more and I couldn’t eat more. My stomach was really upset and sensitive.

I was still working a lot. I worked at Michael’s at the time. And, part of my job required me to lift fairly heavy boxes. So, on the seventh day, I went to work, hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and I was lifting a bunch of boxes and I fell down and [my coworkers] were like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I was like, ‘It’s probably because I haven’t eaten.’ They made me eat something and then sent me home. Then I stopped taking those pills. And, I was just like, ‘Fuck Student Health!’

Ha!

Fuck all these “health professionals.” I’m not doing this no more. And, I kind of decided that I was going to do my best to handle this on my own. I do want to add, as a disclaimer, I don’t think it’s a failure on anyone’s part if medication is a part of their maintenance.

You didn’t know you were dealing with anxiety junior year but by senior year you knew. What happened in between to let you know that you were facing anxiety issues instead of just being overwhelmed?

Junior year, my relationship with my roommate was deteriorating a lot. She was going through a lot of personal stuff and I became her punching bag that year. Then, that was the year my parents got divorced. I had wanted my parents to get a divorce for a long time but I was surprised by how sad it made me when it was finalized. And, I was also really upset with my major in college. I was doing journalism but I really wanted to do creative writing and I was feeling trapped because I was already a junior, my scholarship is up in four years. How do I do what I want to do in the time that I have left?

By senior year, my parents are divorced, my roommate had transferred schools, and I switched to my new major and had committed to doing all the credits that I needed to do. So, everything was “fixed” but I was still feeling stressed.

Yeah, they diagnosed me. I talked to a peer counselor about the various concerns that I had about those situations and then they asked me about signs that you might have an underlying anxiety disorder. For me, for example, I worry about everything. And I always have. My mom used to travel a lot for work when I was growing up. And, I remember being five or six and being inconsolable for days if she would leave for a trip because I was convinced if I wasn’t with her, she was going to die. I was always paranoid about people being out of my sight. Everything stressed me out about driving and traffic. I was always worried that some big, horrible thing was around the corner.

So by the time that conversation was happening senior year of college, they were like ‘That’s probably an anxiety disorder. That’s not what we would consider normal concerns.

Mizzou is such a White environment…

Girl…

Did you feel like any hesitancy going to speak to these people? Did you feel like maybe they wouldn’t get it or be able to relate? Did you have any reservations about that?

Yeah…I felt reservations around being pathologized. I think I was confident that my concerns weren’t explicitly– there’s racial anxiety and then there were the day-to-day concerns about being a college student, which of course are informed by race. So, until senior year and that horrific cotton ball incident, (Our senior year, two boys threw cotton balls in front of our Black Culture Center.) I wasn’t really feeling a whole lot of racial anxiety on campus.

But, I was feeling like when I went to counseling–you know, I grew up Missionary Baptist and you know church folks are always like: ‘Pray about it’ or they’ll talk to the pastor or whatever. And, I was already distancing myself from church by that point. I still prayed but I didn’t feel like it was doing anything. So, I was feeling some sort of way about going to therapy because in my head, I was like ‘Black people don’t do therapy.’ And, then I was also concerned that some White counselor was going to extrapolate my thoughts to make some sort of statement about all Black women.

And, that’s a reservation I still have. I just ended a relationship with a therapist because it became clear to me that she was not able to discuss or understand race in a way that allowed for my full humanity, during our sessions.

You told me you were thinking about getting rid of her.

Sure did. I feel lighter.

But therapy, in general, has been really helpful for me and I am looking to get back into therapy. Part of anxiety is obsession. So, it’s really helpful to have a built-in system of listening, support, and validation that comes from therapy. I really think that everybody needs therapy because it’s nice to have a removed party listen to whatever is troubling you.

Even with your family… I had to tell my mom, ‘Let me know when my phone calls to you have only become panic calls. I don’t want our relationship to be you managing my anxiety.’

What did your mom say when you said that? That’s so mature.

She said, ‘Not at all, you’re my child. I love you.’ And I said, ‘But seriously, let me know.’ She said, ‘I’ll let you know.’ She also told me that when therapy was helping me the most she could tell a difference.

Ugh. No, not at all. I would say there are more stressors now. I think I have a better grasp of how to deal with it now. I’m not perfect and I still mess up–and when I say I still mess up, I mean, I don’t always prioritize my self-care. That’s something that I continue to wrestle with. When stress gets overwhelming or when there are too many balls in the air that I’m juggling, what has happened historically is, my self-care has been the first thing to go. I start sleeping less. I start ordering more food as opposed to cooking. I start skipping the gym or yoga classes. And those are the sorts of things that keep me balanced. By this point, I know that. So, I’m getting much better at saying no. Just saying, ‘Yes, this will get done. But, it’s not going to get done on your timeline. I’m going to take care of myself and then get this thing done.’

I still have panic attacks. It’s rare though. Last year, I had two or three, which is the most I’ve had in my late twenties. But, there were reasons for that. I was coming out of multiple family deaths. So, dealing with grief and not being close to my family. And, also dating or not dating…some sort of weird situationship.

Situationship! That is the best word to describe what these relationships be like.

What else can you call that? These men out here, ‘I don’t really want a relationship. I can’t be anybody’s boyfriend.’ Except I’m going to call you all the time,

Yes! And, monopolize all your time.

And, take you out and even be your emotional support but I’m not your boyfriend.

OOoo Sick shit.

There are always these sorts of triggers with intimate relationships, especially partner relationships. I’ve struggled for a long time to build up a lot of self-esteem, self-worth, and value, which of course anxiety tends to be wrapped up around feelings of insecurity and lack of control. So, trying to be aware of that and doing a lot of work on myself to know myself so that I combat myself when I’m not at my best.

Have you ever had a situation where you try to describe your anxiety disorder to someone and they diminish or belittle it?

Definitely. Multiple people from parents, family members, some friends (former and current) said something or have just being dismissive or acting like anxiety is a choice. Actually, I was telling somebody about this the other day. I was having a conversation about masculinity.

Umph. Gurl…

Right. Which comes into this too because being a woman… My ex said something dismissive before. And, there’s this cultural dismissal of women and their emotions. And, so to see anxiety as an emotional reaction to something as opposed to a real condition dealing with brain chemistry. And, so my ex was pretty dismissive, which is one of the many reasons why we’re no longer together.

What did he say?

He was just like, ‘Oh, you just have to calm down.’ And that’s one of the most infuriating things when somebody tells you to calm down because it’s like, ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that before! I’m choosing to be upset.’ You think this is an ideal situation for me? Like this is fun?!

I recognize that is how my brain operates and how I perceive things in the world and perceive myself in the world. So, I say all that to say that there’s the brain chemistry part and there’s the part that I can control, which is how to remove as many blockades or triggers as possible.

I remember my first semester of grad school, I had a massive panic attack and I was having heart palpitations. So, I called the triage nurse and she was like you need to go to the hospital. So, I went to the hospital for them to do the EKG and all that sort of stuff. And, the orderly, or whoever he was, that was taking me back to my room was like, ‘You’re too young to be stressed. You don’t have anything to be worried about.’

Ugh! A complete stranger!

You have no idea what’s going on in my life. He just saw that I was 25 at the time and saw I was stressed. And, I was like, ‘I cannot control this. I can do as much as I can to neutralize my environment.’ But, when this happens, the best thing I can do when a new symptom pops up is go to the doctor and make sure there isn’t anything else going on. Instead of trying to calm myself down, I just have to let it happen and that makes everything a lot better.

It really doesn’t. By that time, I had been at the hospital so long, I was doing better so I didn’t even say anything. It was like 2 o’clock in the morning. I was just like go away. When people say things, I do normally challenge them. Particularly in our community, we have a lot of spirited stigmas against both mental health issues and seeking care for those things. We have to be very careful how we talk about these things in general because we don’t want to spread misinformation. But, I think, also, you never know who’s struggling. So, why say something that would make it even harder for that person to open up about what they’re going through. I usually come at it from that way.

I sometimes will say, ‘You’ve offended me.’ But it’s about getting back to kindergarten lessons. Be careful with your words.

This whole story reminds me of something Damon Young of Very Smart Brothas wrote a while ago about how men are conditioned not to believe women in a lot of different things. If they tell a story, the assumption is that they’ve overdramatized something. Or, if they tell you they’re feeling a certain way, it’s not that big of a deal. And he was talking about one of the things men have to learn is that women’s emotions are valid and to listen to them.

Our emotions and our experiences. To be a Black woman, I never really realized, until a few years ago, how much I’d internalized a lot of these things and wasn’t even trusting my own memory of these experiences.

Yes! Gurl, gurl, gurl. Which environments or situations do you have to remove yourself from these days?

Sometimes I get social anxiety. Big groups of people. A perfect example is networking events. My heart starts beating a mile a minute. Situations where I feel like I need to prove myself or sell myself or do a sales pitch. I can’t handle those. So, I remove myself from those. Some party situations. There are certain party groups in New York and everybody is all beautiful and very fashionable. Those events kind of stress me out sometimes. Places where I walk in where the energy is welcoming, where it’s calm, where it’s no pressure, and there’s no sort of expectation, is where I feel at home.

It’s part of the reason why I got rid of my online profiles, my dating profiles. I really don’t think I’m ever going back because it’s the same sort of shit, perfectly curating your photos, you want to find something pithy and witty to put on your profile and all of it is a sales tactic.

Part of why I wanted to talk to you about this and part of what I’m doing as a life mission is really seeking authenticity and a rigorous honesty with myself about what I can and cannot handle. Being real about who I am and what I want, need, and deserve. And, I cannot do that when I feel like I’m being made to fit a pre-existing mold.

And, you know we–women are conditioned to be pleasing. So, it’s a skill to learn how to say no to the things you don’t want to participate in.

It’s a big step for women. We’re also conditioned to seek acceptance from other people. So, that’s been a lot of unlearning that I’ve had to do. I genuinely do not require other people’s approval. I do require your respect because I always give respect but that’s about it.

It’s a hard lesson.

It’s really hard and I don’t always do well with that. But, part of that is being real. If somebody says, ‘Hey how are you doing today?’ Just sort of relieving myself of the pressure to say ok when I’m not.

What I’ve learned from my anxiety and what I’ve continued to learn is to let go of expectations. I don’t expect anything of people. When you don’t have expectations, you then give people the room to surprise you. And, I mean that of yourself and of life.

Gurl, you preachin’

I’m tryin girl.

Veronica Wells-Puoane is the creator of the website NoSugarNoCreamMag. She is the author of “Bettah Days” and You’ll Be All Write, a question and answer journal for Black women. She is also the culture editor at MadameNoire.com.

Find more of her articles by Veronica on Curlynikki.com, HERE!

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Outfit Details:

Gucci Sweater, DL1961 Maternity Jean

Here in the south, layering is an everyday part of getting dressed in the fall. Mornings tend to be cooler, with afternoons warming up, calling for the slipping on and off of cardigans and sweaters through-out the day. Since it still feels as if we’re in-between seasons, I’ve been pairing my fall knits with a few of my lighter-weight fall styles. Even with the mild weather, I’m still fully embracing the change in the seasons with new cozy sweaters to add to my collection. Below are some of my latest favorites to bundle up in in the coming months.

The post Notable Knits appeared first on Julia Berolzheimer.

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R29 is proud to partner with Cricut, to explore the ways independent entrepreneurs are transforming modes of creativity into thriving small businesses.

Back in prehistoric times, when thrifting was relegated to brick-and-mortar venues only, the very act of second-hand shopping was marked by serendipity. It was a “stumble upon” economy whereby some of us were eternally luckier than others. In the present tense, though — when “thrifting” implies Poshmark search terms, Depop “influencers,” and certificates of authentication from The RealReal — the whole project of resale is an indisputably calculated affair. And for veteran thrift dealer Lucy Bergstrom, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

“When I was young, thrifting wasn’t cool,” she says. “I remember being so embarrassed about the fact that I purchased all my clothes second-hand. But in recent years, it feels like we’ve totally turned that notion on its head — and in a big way, we have social media to thank.”

In spite of her young reticence, Bergstrom grew to love the process of combing through thrifted garments. And by the time she went to college to study fashion merchandising — and familiarized herself with the looming evils of fast fashion — she was firmly devoted to the project of opening a vintage shop of her own with sustainability at the heart of its mission. And thus, Moby Thrift was born: a roving thrift store housed in an airstream trailer in Utah, helmed by Bergstrom and her husband Drew.

At the time, in 2005, IRL thrift shopping was simply the standard. There was no Facebook Marketplace, there were no “Depop Girls” — and while vintage stores were using Instagram as a marketing tool, on the whole, they weren’t using their social media platforms to actually sell their products. But Bergstrom noted that this felt like a missed opportunity. “The point of being mobile as a store was to reach as many people as possible, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how many more people we could reach online — so we started selling on Instagram,” she says. “Our home essentially became a shipping locker. You couldn’t see an inch of it under all the vintage clothes.”

As a mode of guerilla marketing, in the hopes of getting eyes on their Instagram shop, Bergstrom and her husband partnered with a number of local influencers who were vying to sell their clothes, and offered to take over the project. In exchange for promotion on the influencers’ feeds, Moby Thrift would sell, package, and ship their clothes for them. “We’ve never paid for an ad, but those influencers alone earned us tens of thousands of followers right at the get-go — and we realized we really could run a thrift store on Instagram.”

At present, the shop’s modes of operation have shifted slightly. Beyond Instagram sales (which are still thriving), you can also shop Moby Thrift’s goods in a dedicated brick-and-mortar location in Provo, Utah — one of the first vintage retail venues in the state. And while they’ve run out of time (and space) to hawk influencer’s clothing, they have added some new features to their inventory: Beyond second-hand goods, they’ve also been customizing vintage T-shirts and adding creative detailing to repurposed garments through the use of their trusty, beloved Cricut smart cutting machine.

As if that’s not enough, in 2020, Bergstrom also found the time to launch a second business on the side: Retroflect. Born out of the same sustainability mission, the newly formed venture is all about turning vintage mirrors into works of art. Using her own handmade Cricut stencils, Bergstrom paints, draws, or illustrates on said mirrors, repurposing the antique goods as custom works of art. And in the vein of marketing, she’s found a new digital platform to boost sales: “TikTok has been a major help with Retroflect,” she says. “When we were getting started, I posted a video about my process — and it instantly went viral. It drove so many sales. So, now I’m just trying to keep that momentum going.”

In the meanwhile, as our social media landscape continues to shapeshift — and in turn, so too do our modes of buying and selling vintage garb — we sat down with Bergstrom to chat about the future of thrifting. Ahead, learn more about customized vintage, TikTok marketing, and the ins and outs of a social media thrift economy.

Where do you source the items you sell? 

“We started off just buying in bulk from other thrift vendors — in person, or on Craigslist, or on eBay. We’d purchase these huge bundles of stuff, and we’d spend hours and hours every day digging through giant stores, trying to find the pieces we thought our customers would be interested in. We probably did that for about a year before we started accepting large portions of our inventory from influencers. 

“Now, since Drew is doing most of the buying for Moby Thrift, he’s really become part of a thrifting community. He makes trades with other re-sellers, or he sources through vintage-forward communities on Facebook Marketplace. We attend the occasional estate sale. And then, we customize some pieces of our own.”

What kinds of custom pieces are you making?

“Of late, we’ve started recreating vintage style T-shirts. Last year, we came out with a vintage-style Princess Diana shirt by silk screening second-hand tees — and it was so popular, it sold out several times. But for the most part, we’re adding our own custom tags to garments with our Cricut machine, designing labels on baseball cards, and adding little personal bits of stitching or color on pieces we’re feeling excited about. That part of the business is what feels really special: Thanks to Cricut, we get to add such a unique, individualized touch to everything we make. We leave our mark.

“Then, in the home goods realm, I’m taking vintage mirrors and other used home goods and painting or drawing onto them with homemade Cricut stencils, I recently made a pair of these twin, giant ‘70s-style mirrors with rainbows stretching across, and I totally love how they turned out. It’s just been such a fun process because we get to exercise all this creativity without going against our sustainability mission. We just love bringing that individuality to people’s homes and wardrobes while also taking care of the planet.

“That said, it’s really, really hard to scale something on a custom level when you’re as small of an operation as we are. So, often, we’ll have these ideas, but we just won’t have the means to produce enough quantity to keep up with demand. But regardless of what happens on the custom end, we don’t want to lose the vintage feel. We still want to bring things back from the dead — but we also want to add some little personal flair. So…we’re still in the trial-and-error phase of executing that.”

What was the process of opening your brick-and-mortar store like? 

“We actually opened in the midst of the pandemic — this past December. Of course, we were nervous about it — but we knew we’d follow precautions, and we’d been making a steady income throughout the whole quarantine period since we’d always been a social media-first vendor. And we kind of felt like it could be a nice soft start — we could see how it went having the brick-and-mortar space without getting too overwhelmed, since we’d only been online for years. 

“That said, it’s something we had wanted for a really long time. Over the past few years, we’ve done a ton of pop-up shops — almost monthly. And that’s where a huge quantity of our sales were coming from. The problem was, our entire house was just full of inventory. So it was kind of nice to take our time moving our full inventory into this new space. But we don’t want to be open all the time — we kind of want to treat this space like a more formal pop-up. We want to be open around two days a week to still preserve that special, pop-up feel. And last October, when we stumbled upon this perfect space, we felt like we had to take it. Even though it was during the pandemic, and we weren’t making as much money as we were used to, we just couldn’t let this opportunity pass us by.”

Do you still sell on Instagram in addition to your brick-and-mortar shop? 

“We do use Instagram to sell, still — and it’s still where most of our sales are coming from. We have a website as well, and we sell plenty of things in stores, but we can just reach so many more people online. Around once a week, we’ll do an IG story sale where we’ll just throw a bunch of clothes up on our story, and people message us if they want to purchase.  Then, our website is mostly for rarer, more expensive collector’s items. Things that we don’t expect to casually sell in stores or on Instagram. And this applies both to our clothing and our home goods. It’s just kind of a fully combined enterprise.”

Can you tell me about your experience using TikTok as a marketing tool, in addition to Instagram?

“It’s been a journey, and I’m totally still learning. It definitely has its ups and downs. The first Retroflect TikTok post I made blew up, and I got 6,000 followers instantly, and that drove so many sales. But then, I felt like I couldn’t quite keep up! It’s hard to churn out TikTok content the way you would on a different platform. 

I still haven’t totally matched that initial video, but it was this great reminder for me that people like this content, they like this concept, they like what I’m doing. That particular video was all about walking through my DIY method, from the initial Cricut processes through the final product, so I know that works. Then, in the broader sense, I’ve really re-focused myself on video. I’m spending way more time making Reels or giving IGTV a shot because I think video, as a format, is the future of social media — so we’re going to have to get on board if we’re going to keep up. It’s just so much trial and error. but like, if you go viral, it could literally change your life. But I will say, making TikToks feels like it could be a whole, full-time job. It’s crazy. I’m so admiring of the folks who make it look so easy to make great stuff.”

Do you think this pivot to social media thrifting is a good thing in the long run? Is it changing the landscape of vintage shopping for the better? 

“It’s funny, in a way, I feel like thrifting in its current mode has developed the opposite stigma it had while I was growing up. It used to be sort of uncool and inaccessible, and now, there’s this narrative that resale is actually becoming too privileged. Often, I’ll see girls on Instagram showing off their ‘thrift hauls’ — and sometimes they’ll resell from there. Sure, there are definitely parts of that that aren’t ideal. Of course, influencers shouldn’t be sourcing from spaces that are meant for low income families, but at the same time, the world will literally never run out of clothing. The fast fashion industry has made that entirely impossible. So the more people who can recycle and who can resell, the better. I just love the idea of slowing things down — and anybody who resells is, in a way, contributing to slowing down the fashion market. 

“Of course, there are things that should change. We should absolutely be responsible about where we’re sourcing from. And I do think people get a little bit crazy with their prices — your standard, second-hand shirt doesn’t need to cost $50. But on the whole, I think that this whole realm of social media has done so much incredible work to destigmatize buying your clothing second-hand, and extending the lifecycle of a garment, and in the long run, I think it’s really the best offense against fast fashion that we have.”

Is there anything you wish the social media thrifting landscape did differently?

“As folks with public-facing fashion platforms, I think we need to find ways of becoming more democractic. Of course there will always be vendors of rare or designer goods, but I think social media provides a really cool opportunity for us to reach all different demographics with curated thrift. That’s one of the cool things about being a rare breed of thrift store in Utah — I feel like we’re drawing in a unique crowd. But in the future, I’m really hoping that Instagram initiates something similar to Facebook marketplace, where you don’t need to have a following or be ‘in the know’ to buy and sell exciting used goods. For most of Gen Z, it seems like Facebook or Craigslist are kind of lost relics, so I feel like we need that kind of service on Instagram.

“In addition to that, though, I would love for us all to spend more time on education. There’s so much false information disseminated so quickly by all kinds of brands, and I think we’d all be more conscious consumers if we really understood what was happening around us in the fast fashion industry. And this goes beyond fashion — it applies to your mattress, your appliances, your utensils, and so on. And if people really understood how easily they could purchase everything second-hand, I think they’d be doing it way more.”

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“If you were a tree, what kind would you be?” It’s the type of inane question that many people would roll their eyes at if it were asked during an icebreaker exercise or on a first date. But for Sally Gibson, the question was posed someplace much, much worse: a job interview. 

“​​I was completely thrown by it. I basically froze,” recalls Gibson, the founder and owner of Someone Sent You A Greeting. “I was silent for longer than I care to remember and ended up just saying the first tree that came into my head — elm. I didn’t elaborate any further and just lapsed into more silence and I think the interviewer realized there wasn’t much point following up as he moved on after that.” This happened about 20 years ago, and Gibson says that she still looks back at that moment and cringes. 

At the time, she kicked herself for not being more prepared for an off-the-wall question like this, because they’d become very popular in the early-2000s. Job seekers were told to expect to be asked things like: “How much does the Empire State Building weigh?” “How many golf balls would fit into a 747?” “Why are manhole covers round?” or, a question immortalized in the 2013 film The Internship, “You’re shrunk down to the size of nickels and dropped into the bottom of a blender. What do you do?” 

Privately, however, Gibson has always considered this type of question basically useless. “You don’t learn anything really insightful about the person you’re interviewing and they seem more like a ‘gotcha!’ moment or attempt to trip people up rather than be of any real value,” she says. 

Amra Beganovich says she was asked brain teaser questions “about a dozen-plus times” between 2006 and 2008, while interviewing for consulting positions as an economist for companies like IMR and Worldbank. Once, she was asked how she could place three balls into two boxes so that there were an equal number in each box. Her answer was to cut open one side of each box and combine them so they overlapped, then place one ball in each box and one in the overlapping portion. This was deemed correct, but she, too, came away with a distaste for the questions. “[They don’t] test critical thinking or creativity. People who performed best on these were mentored by others on how to answer brain-teaser questions as they often repeated in various interviews. Basically, it puts those without a mentor at a disadvantage,” says Beganovich, who’s now the CEO of a digital marketing agency, Amra & Elma.

The questions plagued job seekers across industries. While interviewing to be a dental assistant in 2018, Michelle Keldgord was asked, “You have two coins that equal 30 cents, and one of them is not a nickel. What coins do you have?” She knows the answer is relatively obvious (a quarter and a nickel; the quarter is the coin that’s not a nickel), but she was nervous and had already gotten off to a bad start with the interviewer, so at the time she was “dumbfounded,” she says. “I was peeved [that] I was being asked to answer a riddle in a professional environment. I don’t think it showed my wit or understanding. I would have much rather answered questions related to the dental field to show how smart I was,” says Keldgord, who went on to co-found BakingHow. 

Considering the fact that they’re nearly universally despised, you have to wonder why these questions exist in the first place. Their origin is actually a bit fuzzy. In the early-aughts, prevailing wisdom was that they were used during Google interviews. But in a 2010 post on her website, Gayle Laakmann McDowell, who had been a software engineer at Google and served on the company’s hiring committee, said that this wasn’t true. “Years ago, rumors used to circulate about Microsoft interviews,” she wrote. “They were the hot, new company that everyone wanted to work. With envy came the urban myths. These rumors have since been transfered to Google, and will surely be transfered to some new company in due time. Bloggers — always desperate for links and traffic — have capitalized on this, with scary articles about their ‘nightmare interview’ and ‘crazy questions’. Let’s just stop this right now, shall we? [sic]” She went on to state that brain teasers are explicitly banned at Google (and Microsoft) during interviews.

This post didn’t appear to quiet the rumors much, if at all, though. In a 2013 interview with The New York Times, Laszlo Bock, who spent 10 years as senior vice president of people operations at Google before leaving the company in December 2016, brought up the questions again — although he didn’t explicitly address whether or not they’d ever been used at Google. He simply said that studies the company had conducted showed “that brain teasers are a complete waste of time… They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.” 

Eric Cole, the founder of InterviewIQ, agrees. “As a hiring manager for over 35 years, and now as a career coach and interview coach, I have heard and even asked some pretty bad questions,” admits Cole. “Unfortunately, most interviewers who ask those impossible ‘brain teaser’ questions are really more interested in flexing their ego and showing off.” 

He says that brain teasers are ostensibly designed to gauge a candidate’s critical thinking: As long as the person can walk the interviewer through their logic, their answer should count as “good,” even if their actual answer to a question like “How many marbles would fit in the Louvre?” is wrong. But not every candidate has a thinking style that’s well-suited for brain teasers, Cole says. Some people are better able to think out loud than others, who may need inward reflection time before they can walk someone through their thought process. There are much better ways to gauge a candidates’ problem-solving style and critical-thinking skills than to ask them a random riddle, such as asking how people juggle competing priorities, how they best grow, the most useful lesson they’ve learned from a more senior colleague, or for an example of a time they made a mistake and how they handled it. 

Brain teasers aren’t just annoying. Cole says interviewers who rely on brain teasers can sometimes want to make a candidate feel uncomfortable — and that information might give you useful insight into that company’s culture. I spoke to a friend of mine, Sarah Hudson*, a talent director in the advertising industry in New York City with 12 years’ experience interviewing job candidates, and she says that these questions can even hint at something iffy going on at the hiring company. “Particularly as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion, there’s a lot of conversation going on right now about making sure that you’re standardizing questions and that you’re asking things that will get to a certain point to really understand the person,” Hudson says. If she were ever asked a brain teaser question in an interview, she’d assume the person isn’t trained in the latest interview techniques, and would see it as a red flag. 

As for Gibson, she says if someone asked her a similar question today, she thinks she’d be less easily thrown off her game — although she’d certainly be annoyed. “Having been through many interviews now I still don’t see what you gain from a question like that. I’d like to think I’d be brave enough to ask how relevant it is but I don’t suppose that would do me many favors!” she says. “I definitely think they’ve had their time though and would be surprised to find interviewers still using them.” 

Now if only we could get interviewers to do away with, “So, where do you see yourself in five years?”

*Hudson’s name was changed for privacy.

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