Looking Good on a Budget

Photograph by Meryl Streak.

You have to look fabulous, but you’re a college student. You’re not getting anywhere near stylish with a minimum wage job – and that’s without your student loans. But just because you’re broke as shit doesn’t mean you can’t get the kind of clothes you want. You just have to be creative.

People drop their clothes all the time. If they really wanted the clothing, they wouldn’t have dropped it in the first place. Think about it. If you got your dress dry-cleaned and dropped it on the ground, are you someone who really wants that dress? Are you someone who really deserves that dress? Of course not. So feel free to grab any clothes you see on the ground.

Picking up dropped clothing can be an unreliable source, though. Why go fishing when you live right above a fish market? The fish market, in this metaphor, being unattended clothes in the laundry room.

Some people might call this practice “wrong” and “a misdemeanor,” but not if you think about it just a little bit harder. Anyone who’s ever shared their laundry services has dealt with it; some inconsiderate jerk-off thinks that the dryer suddenly transformed into his long-term clothing storage. By leaving their clothes, they’re wasting everyone’s time. And if time is money, that person owes you. Specifically, they owe you clothes that you’re taking from the dryer.

Now that you’re morally OK with your newest form of shopping, you need to know where to look. There are dozens of laundry rooms and hundreds of piles of clothing just begging for a new cute and stylish owner like yourself. 

To get the best bang for your buck, you have to go from whence you came: dorms. Every freshman, no matter how stylish or wealthy, has to use the dorms. That’s a demographic you lose when you get to apartments. Daddy’s money can’t buy them their own private laundry room just yet.

The downside is the sheer volume. You might have to sort through mountains of tube socks and cargo shorts to find the sexy, form-fitting needles in that haystack. That is, if you find anything at all. Just take a look at everyone’s IDs; nobody looks their best during their freshman year.

You might have to sort through mountains of tube socks and cargo shorts to find the sexy, form-fitting needles in that haystack. 

Access is no issue, either. Anyone with a student ID can waltz right in and grab whatever they want. But that, in a way, cheapens the experience. Half of how good you look in clothes is the confidence you exude when wearing them. Kanye’s t-shirts are not $120 for no reason; when you put that much effort into getting clothes, it looks damn good because you know it does. 

And that is why you have to break into people’s apartments to get the best looking clothes. You’ve already shown how morally flexible you are. If you stick to the more expensive apartments, you’re not doing anything wrong. If anything, you’re doing the world a favor. For too long the top one percent has hoarded their smart, high quality fabrics. Feel the Bern. Grab that cashmere sweater and redistribute it onto your torso.

Crime, when you get down to it, is whatever you say it is. When you stretch your moral flexibility just a tad, you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. Be the best person you can be and grab whatever isn’t nailed down. Because when you look good, you are good.