As I told my color colleague in LA, Denise Lampron, I am color-greedy. I like having a lot of options in my color palette, even though I mostly use just a few of them in a season. When I saw her palette had about half as many color sticks as I do I was intrigued, how did she do it?

We had a great time discussing this in a Zoom call.

Here’s Denise in a fabulous outfit that personifies a Vital Spring style. Saturated color, sprightly pattern with a playful shape.

She is a gifted thrift-shopper, and often finds her best pieces online. She has several excellent tips for thrift shopping. The first and most important one is knowing what you love. She offers this exercise to help you hone in on that:

Pull 3 items from your wardrobe that you LOVE. List all the reasons you love it, including how it makes you feel. Is there anything you would change about it?

Then pull 3 items from your wardrobe that you DON’T LOVE. List all the reasons you don’t love it, including how it makes you feel. Is there anything that you would change to make it love worthy? If so, that’s a clue about what you need in a garment to LOVE it.

Of course you also need to know the color, size and style you’re looking for. Once you get to a particular site you can refine your search to just the type of garment, the color, etc. If you know the brand you want, even better, especially if they carry special lines, like for Petite, Tall, Plus, etc.

Here are some sites she has used:

The Real Real (they have physical locations too)

I’d love to hear about your own online shopping experiences.