By Lexie Rodenbaugh | Arts & Life Writer
In the online fashion community, possessing a closet full of “Pinterest-worthy” outfits has become a coveted status symbol, but not everybody has the skill to bring that style off Pinterest and into the real world.
Chandler, Ariz., sophomore Audrey Savage has created a business to do just that by creating personalized style bundles for the students of Baylor and beyond.
For Savage, thrifting started purely as a money-saving tactic in a world of expensive clothes, but she quickly realized she had a knack for it.
“I’ve been thrifting since I was in middle school,” Savage said. “I just really liked it because you can find trendy things on a budget. I didn’t have a ton of money, but I wanted to dress super cute. … I would just go to the thrift store and find such great things.”
The people around her noticed her talent, too. New City, N.Y., sophomore Annelise Hur has seen Savage’s journey to success firsthand.
“Watching Audrey in action is always so captivating,” Hur said. “She has an eye for things that not everyone can catch and can always envision the final product. She doesn’t see things by a single piece, but by the whole image.”
The hobby started to mean much more to Savage when she was told she would have to pay for her first car. Not wanting to sit in a cubicle or work at a fast food restaurant, she decided to turn to what she knows and loves as a means to make money.
“I just wanted to do something that I genuinely enjoyed,” Savage said. “I didn’t want to spend all this time working at a job that I didn’t even like doing. I basically just started posting my old clothes and selling them on Depop. … It kind of took off, I was able to buy my first car because of it.”
The natural pipeline for Savage was to start posting her style on Pinterest, and that blew up, too.
“My impressions — or views — were actually incredible,” Savage said. “Over the past four years, I’ve literally gotten eight million impressions. … Then, I got invited to this really big event in New York put on by Pinterest for creators. It was incredible.”
Pinterest fame isn’t something that is widely known or talked about, but for Savage, it was the beginning of something huge for her career.
“That was what inspired me to create Curated by Audrey,” Savage said. “I went to New York, and I saw all of these creators doing jobs that they loved, and helping people, and I was like, ‘I want to do that.'”
Even after attending the Pinterest event, selling the curated style guides wasn’t in Savage’s line of vision until people started direct messaging her asking for them on Instagram.
“That’s when I really started doing the bundles,” Savage said. “How that works is I basically take my client’s inspiration pictures — they send me their inspiration, their sizes, everything. Because I have such a knowledge of Pinterest and the trends, I’m able to go to thrift stores and source exactly what they want.”
Thrifting is a skill, and Audrey’s honed that skill through seven years of experience that most students don’t have.
“When somebody sends me a Pinterest board of a bunch of different outfits, I’m able to identify certain pieces in that board, and then I go to the thrift store,” Savage said. “It’s honestly just second nature to me. … I give the example of when someone’s obsessed with something — like if someone’s obsessed with pink — they’ll find that thing everywhere they go. My brain is trained to see the vision and things that other people might pass by.”
Her knowledge and skill don’t go unnoticed by those around her, either. Gilbert, AZ., sophomore James Murphy, Savage’s boyfriend, has known her since the beginning, and has gotten to witness this skill several times.
“Her ability to know exactly what she’s looking for and have the resourcefulness to go out and find it is truly impressive,” Murphy said.
In fact, she has such a knowledge of the latest fashion and trends that she forecasted the polka dot trend last February, and it’s blown up tremendously since.
“I kid you not, I literally posted a graphic on Pinterest in February of like, how polka dots will be the newest trend,” Savage said. “Now, they’re everywhere. It’s actually insane.”
It’s not just about fashion and funds for Savage; there’s an environmental aspect to thrifting that resonates with her.
“It is crazy how many clothes we waste,” Savage said. “I think I saw a statistic recently that said we could clothe the next seven generations … with the amount of clothes we’ve already produced. … We are just such a consuming world, and I think that it’s just like, ‘We have the resources already, why wouldn’t we use them.”
