coming of age at TJ Maxx
a memoir of never paying full price
Growing up as the child of immigrants in America is a masterclass in moving — moving to a new country, moving between cultures, moving to the next apartment, moving to a better school district, moving between social classes. One day I was home, and then the next day we moved … to the US, and I had to start all over and learn English in second grade. In those early days, before he started his own business, my dad worked as a server in restaurants and my mom worked in sweatshops for a time, until a friend referred her to a white-collar office job.
One night, a man was shot across the street from our apartment, and not long after, we moved from our rundown ground floor apartment in a gritty part of the city to a carpeted second-floor apartment in a quiet working class neighborhood. Right before I started 6th grade, my parents put a down payment on a modest older house on the fringes of an upper middle class suburb with a great school district. We finally had a home of our own, and a backyard. According to the playbook of The American Dream, we had made it.1
We were poor long before I understood what that meant. Moving to an affluent suburb changed all that. We lived by the edge of town, where the affluence had ebbed away to developments of older, smaller homes. Middle school was a crash course in social hierarchy and the tribal cultures of teenage girls. The popular girls wore makeup and had perfect hair — straight, glossy blowouts — and had brand name everything. Everyone had braces or perfect teeth because they got their braces off already. (I had crooked teeth and didn’t get braces until my parents could afford it, late into my freshman year of high school.)
One year, my entire social calendar was booked with bar and bat mitzvahs at country clubs with DJs and fancy catering. My new friends — whose parents were doctors and lawyers and business executives — went to sleep away camp in the summers and on ski trips during winter break. In high school, the popular girls wore designer jeans and got silver Tiffany charm bracelets for their birthday. The artsy kids wore Birkenstocks and Doc Martens with their vintage band tees and distressed jeans. Everyone went to the mall and shopped at The Limited and The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch.
My mom and I shopped at Aldi and TJ Maxx and Ross, sometimes Burlington Coat Factory if we were focused on finding that holy grail, a bargain-priced wool-blend tailored long coat (we eventually found it). Sale shopping with my mom taught me everything: I learned how to tell good quality from bad; which styles had longevity; what was a great value versus what was merely cheap. More than anything, she taught me that cultivating a good eye and a sharp instinct was more valuable than having the money to buy whatever you wanted. Over time, I learned how to hone in on the most valuable of sale items: that item on deep markdown that fit well and looked like it cost a lot. This was (and still is) my fashion superpower.
Nearly everything that I wore of consequence was some kind of sale find, or from the random pile of surprisingly stylish vintage clothes I found in one of the closets of our house (the previous owner’s heirs had cleaned out two-thirds of the house, then gave up). We never shopped full price because we couldn’t afford it, but I loved the thrill of the bargain hunt every time. For senior prom, some of the popular girls got their designer dresses custom made. My mom found my prom dress — a simple red polyester-chiffon column number — at TJ Maxx for 70% off. I loved it and felt like a million bucks the entire night.
In college, while juggling classes and my work-study job, I would occasionally go thrifting uptown with my friends. The secondhand stores — emporiums, really — were cavernous and you paid for your finds by the pound. This was also when I discovered the magic of DSW, that Mecca of markdowns where all the big brands — DKNY, Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren — could be found on deep discount. When I moved to NYC after graduation, my friends and I would hunt for past season designer gems at Century 21, DSW, and Loehmann’s. My luckiest finds from that time were a Helmut Lang deconstructed trench coat (from Loehmann’s, RIP) and the perfect kitten heel tall boots (Lauren by Ralph Lauren, from DSW).
When I got engaged and went shopping for my wedding dress, the sticker shock set in and never let up. By this time, I could afford something rather nice, but I bristled at the high prices of off-the-rack dresses, and could not stomach the even more astronomical realm of the designer bridal atelier. I sifted through countless beautiful dresses, yet felt uninspired. I (unsuccessfully) tried to block out my mental cost-per-wear calculator, telling myself that this was the one ‘reasonably unreasonable’ exception to the rule (but is it really?). My mom encouraged me to splurge on something special. I hesitated.
Then it dawned on me: I missed the hunt, that old excitement of looking for a deal that my mom and I shared all those years ago. A few months later, I found my dress and a bejeweled bridal hairpin, both on sale. The dress was 70% off from BHLDN and three sizes too big, so I had my longtime tailor at my neighborhood dry cleaners do the alterations. He and his wife were Korean immigrants, and they had two adult children my age who also grew up in the US and were starting their young professional lives. When I went in for the fitting at the end of the day, a peacefulness had settled in the shop. A Korean radio program played softly in the background. They beamed as they pinned and made the adjustments on my dress, asking me about my wedding plans. For a moment, it felt like home.
I could finally afford the full price fancy dress that my mom wanted me to have, but I was happiest doing what she taught me so many years ago: head over to the discount section, and find the best thing at the lowest price. I never want to lose that feeling of sticker shock. I value it more than the most luxurious things money can buy, because once it’s gone, something essential about who you were and where you came from vanishes with it.
The day I got married, I wore my bargain dress and felt like how I always wanted to on The Big Day — very much like myself. And the cost-per-wear was totally worth it.
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What were your favorite shops growing up? I’d love to hear about your most memorable purchases!
For more on this topic, I highly recommend the Vox article “What the American dream looks like for immigrants” by
(who writes the excellent and illuminating Culture Study substack).
Your post brought tears to my eyes. I am also a child of immigrants who had a similar experience growing up. I remember feeling outcast because I was wearing a $10 Betty Boop t-shirt from a store called Dots (everything $10 and under) while the other girls rocked their stylish outfits from the Limited. But like you, I also didn’t understand we were poor until one day I asked my parents if we were rich and they had a great laugh and explained to me that we weren’t rich but we had what we needed. Looking back I am so grateful to have had that experience. I don’t feel like I need to chase the next best thing and feel fully settled and comfortable in my own skin, dressing for myself.
Relate to all of this so profoundly, from the discount prom dress (skirt c/o Burlington and corset c/o Hot Topic) to the work study gig and Century 21 in college (while surrounded by trust fund kids) to the wedding gown. In my case, I couldn’t stomach the price of a new dress so I went to a since-closed shop in NYC called the Bridal Garden that sold donated samples and gave the profits to charity. I haven’t lost the thrill of the hunt, and years ago when I first followed your blog I even scored a half-off Rick Owens leather jacket of Ssense, still a heart-stopping amount for me at the time put the PPW has definitely been worth it! It’s easy to forget where I came from sometimes, thanks for this reminder.