on thrifty fashion

and something I learned from my mom

As a small child, I spent a lot of time at the mall. My mom is and was an excellent shopper.

It’s a point of pride for her.

In her twenties, when I was little, she loved shopping at Thrifties.

Growing up, the word ‘thrifty’ always meant ‘fashionable’ to me.

My long departed nanny would say this this can be attributed to having Scottish heritage.

I’m a McCormick from the North Shore of the island. We’re Scottish, we’re cheap.

As the oldest of eighteen children, she wasn’t cheap growing up. They were poor. Dirt poor. By the time she was six she had four siblings to look after. By the time she was a teen, the number of siblings she looked after went into the double digits.

They lived through the depression. They endured the rationing of the second world war. They lost friends. They died in war and in farm accidents.

Again, they were poor. The food they grew the previous year and had saved for the winter was very sparse by the spring.

Given this, it’s not too difficult to see how opulence, exces…