Tales from the Closet: Pt.1

Love the dress and want to see it up close? Check out this post

In every closet are those special pieces that helped shaped the style surrounding them. 

I've wanted to do a series of posts like this for a while and then I processed that today is Thursday and I knew that today was the day-cause let me tell you, I'm throwing it way back with this story. This dress was my very first item of Lilly Pulitzer clothing-the beginning of a true love story if ever there was one. It was a Christmas gift in 2010 when I was in 8th grade, and it wasn't even supposed to be for me. 

This pretty shift was originally purchased off Ebay (yes you read that right) for my older sister. My Mum had selected a green Lilly dress with pink dragon flies and tank top style spaghetti straps for me. As it turned out the dragon fly number was way too big for me and the colorful shift was too small for my sister, so an exchange was made. 

Six years later and it's still one of my absolute favorite pieces in my closet. I wore to my high school graduation party, I wore to Mexico my freshman year of college, most recently I even wore it to my first rowing banquet with my team this summer only to discover that it now needed the hem to come down. It may have cost less than $80 on Ebay but over the years it has accumulated priceless value to me. 

Speaking of Ebay, I am met with a lot of concerned expressions when I mention that I get a fair amount of my high quality clothing used from the site (perks of being a person who is a size that most people don't wear.) I will say that I have had my share of mishaps but over the years I have developed some failsafe methods for shopping the online consignment market.   

            

1. Does the seller have 100% positive feedback?Honestly, there is really no reason a seller should not have all positive reviews on Ebay. If they don't you might want to look into a a different seller because chances are something went wrong with a past sale and you don't want that next negative review to be you. 

2. Pay attention to what else they are selling I won't say that there isn't the chance this seller just happened to find a gem in the back of their closet that they aren't wearing anymore and decided to sell-but for the most part, sellers sell what they know and if they sell, say, all movies and one Lilly Pulitzer dress you should probably pass.  

3. Look at the tag. Is it vintage? If so, size up!A lot of the Lilly's I find on Ebay are quite a bit older. For the most part, that's why I love them because there is nothing like those dresses in the current line today, and yet many are truly timeless. If you are going to go for a vintage piece (i.e without the current pink Lilly tags) you should size up possibly even two sizes depending on it's exact production year. The dress in this post is a vintage, probably from the 80s, and is a size 2. I have an awesome pink picnic style gingham vinatge Lilly that is even older and is a size 4. Focus on what fits well, not the number!