how to catch a rental dress thief
+ 30 secondhand pieces: aqua-colored everything, silk corset top and skirt sets, and a vintage shoe brand i'm so into.
This week in the molechat: wedding shoe recs, tips for home framing, what colors to wear with a cerulean skirt, office wardrobe ideas, dating a vintage JPG dress, and Belfast/Dublin recs. Paid readers get to start threads.
Happy weekend. Feeling rich in life because my breakfast, lunch, and dinner today will involve early girl tomatoes 🍅
What were you wearing in college in 2016!? Was the American Apparel sunflower print dress as big on your campus as it was on mine? I’m putting together a reader-submitted outfit roundup for back-to-school season. The piece will be free to read on UNSAID. Survey closes on 8/13, feel free to circulate with your friends!
Has your news feed also declared aqua as the color of the summer? I’m working on a piece as to why this color and why now, and my research has led me down a fascinating rabbit hole on Frutiger Aero and its origins in South Korea. This is totally connected to the Zara Larsson dolphin meme.
Everyone I’ve seen wearing this silk striped Realisation Par dress looks so good in it. Something about the earthy Southwestern color palette and the way the diagonal stripes give dimension to the body. I got their Sadie polka dot halter dress a few years ago and lowkey forgot about the brand, until this print.
The Molehill turns 5 years old this month! To celebrate (and reflect), I’m doing an AMA—drop your questions in the comments or here.
Today’s newsletter: my take on the dress thief drama on Pickle (that might be a manufactured PR stunt?), and a secondhand sonar drop of 30 pieces inspired by what I’m shopping for myself rn:
Aqua colored silk tops, dresses, and skirts
a vintage shoe brand I’m so into bc it looks like Martiniano and Prada
a pair of Dries-esque mules
lots of Molehill green
silk corset tops to wear with skirts
the first whisper of cropped jackets for fall…
I would never loan my vintage clothes out to strangers because I would be CRUSHED if they got lost or stolen.
This nightmare scenario played out before my eyes on TikTok this week, where two videos about dress thieves on Pickle, the peer-to-peer clothing rental platform, went viral. These were two separate incidents, posted by two different women, but they recount similar experiences:
The first incident is centered on a vintage Herve Leger dress (similar to the one Blair Waldorf wore in Gossip Girl).
The original video is now deleted, but you can piece together what happened
in this follow up video: Girl A rents out her blue Herve Leger bandage dress to Girl B. When it’s not returned on time, Girl A asks what’s going on…only to get blocked by Girl B on Pickle. Girl A finds Girl B’s Instagram, where there are feed posts of her wearing the stolen dress. Yikes! Girl A doesn’t get her dress back until she posts the video online, which essentially drags Girl B through the court of public opinion.
The second incident involves a wedding reception dress. Like the incident above, the original video has been deleted, but here’s a stitched recap. Girl A rents out her wedding reception dress to Girl B, who wears it for her wedding as well. Girl B never returned it, and the dress was marked as stolen. Pickle reimbursed Girl A with a “Replacement Value Payout,” which, according to their policy, is capped at $500 if the item is valued at over $2000—unless you submit additional forms proving the sale price. Sounds like a lot of pain and paperwork.
Because we’re living in a time when Everything Is An Ad (see: Rachel Karten’s article on this topic)…the online reaction is rightfully a bit suspicious about the timing of these two viral stories.
Is this all just a manufactured publicity stunt by Pickle?