Don't go nuts at the sight of this sign.

The other day, I was supposed to meet a friend at an estate sale to which I’d received a "pre-sale" invitation to attend. She, like me, is an avid collector and seller of vintage clothing, and she drove over an hour to see the tons of quality vintage clothes that were promised. I hit a bit of a snafu on my way out the door and was running late to meet her -- meaning that I would not be able to join her half an hour early, as we’d planned. Then, about ten minutes before I was supposed to meet her, she called to tell me not to bother: "There’s a list outside the door and I’m number 38. There are tons of people milling around and none of them look friendly." I told her that I was still curious and was going to head on over. But less than five minutes later, she called me again. "I’m sorry, T, but I’m leaving," she said. "These people have fangs. I just asked a couple of guys a question and they looked at me with total disdain. I just don’t have the energy for this." And with that, she hopped back on the highway and drove for an hour back the way she’d come, utterly lacking the stamina needed to deal with the rude glances and jostling movements of milling strangers.

An image from the Polyvore website.

Lately, I've been encountering a lot of style blogs where the authors are completely obsessed with Polyvore, a website that allows its users to make elaborate fashion and interior design-style collages using images they’ve uncovered all over the web or on the site itself. Users can create a profile, save their collages, see and comment upon the collages that others have crafted, and have the pieces that they discover become pictures that other Polyvore fans can use in their own collages. Because of the balance between individual creativity and communal image-sharing, Polyvore allows its users to express their individuality while also expressing themselves as part of a larger creative community.

The cat's pajamas.

I'm always curious to know whether or not the items that fashion magazines list as a season’s essentials are actually considered to be must-haves by the buying public. I've discovered that fashion blogs are a great way to find out what items people are obsessed with purchasing and which ones they choose to integrate into their wardrobes time and again. I figured that by first seeking out a given magazine’s list of essentials and then plugging those essentials into a search engine, I could learn which items the fashion-obsessed were actually interested in wearing.

Online wapping adds up to 'net savings.

I recently wrote about how perusing Wardrobe Remix, a Flickr community, can help those of us who become easily bored with our wardrobes to find new and creative ways to wear our clothes. Perhaps you read that post, checked out Wardrobe Remix and became totally re-inspired by the pieces that you already own. Or, maybe you read it, mentally or literally filed through your wardrobe and thought, "Nope. I still don’t have anything to wear. My wardrobe is played out. End of story."

Might I suggest an epilogue?

Last year, I discovered some websites that allow registered users to swap their new and used clothes for items being offered by other users. Swap meets have gone high tech! Anyone with new pieces they never got around to wearing, or used pieces that still have life in them, can now log onto such sites and swap to their hearts delight. While there are many different sites out there to suit all different sorts of sartorial sensibilities, two of the most intriguing are Swapstyle.com and Rehash Clothing.

Fashion times three.

Editor's note: The Cat's Pajamas, our fashion blog, is taking a cat nap. But fear not: Some of your favorite CP features will pop up on The Latest Word from time to time -- including TaRosa Jacobs' Secondhand Sartorialism. Here's her latest installment.

When I was in high school, I’d often complain to my mother that I had nothing to wear. She would look at my overflowing closet and tell me, "You have plenty to wear. You just need to find new ways to wear it." She encouraged me to do what she had done for years when she needed to bring new life to her wardrobe -- flip through fashion magazines and look for photo spreads featuring pieces that resembled items she already owned. By looking at the creative ways that other people chose to style similar pieces, she became inspired to wear her old pieces in exciting new ways -- without having to go shopping.

For past editions of Secondhand Sartorialism, click here.