Second-hand stress

I’ve started using Vinted as a distraction from stress. The second-hand clothing platform is my favourite app to open when interview transcripts start to make my head spin. From the library, I search for nightgowns from La Perla.

The price of a new negligé from the exquisite Italian lingerie brand starts at 200 euros at least. Vinted is full of pyjamas, bikinis and tops that can be yours for less than 10 per cent of that original price. Around three new items are added every day. I check this just as often as the news.

My eye first catches a silk piece. Light blue with black stripes, new without a price tag, 15 euros. I bid 12, and a week and a half later, it arrives. The high from the purchase overwhelms me; I want more. I bid as low as possible on a babydoll model with a pattern of abstract blue and red blossom branches. It’s mine. That very same day, a coral piece with green straps that wrap around the cups like leaves is listed by an Italian account. I confidently bid low and get outbid.

It feels like a rejection and my instinct is to cling harder to this piece. I begin to scroll anxiously until I find a four-year-old ad featuring the same ‘magnifique nuisette coraille’. Manon93 has chosen to show in the photos that the gown is too small for her. Four years ago, she put her phone on the table in her dark room, stood next to an open window, and took a photo from the front and back with a self-timer.

I’m startled by the photos and, feeling embarrassed, I place my phone next to the computer. It’s not that I’m ashamed of my thesis-coping-mechanism shopping behaviour, but I’m touched by the confrontation with the private moment of the French seller. The moment she realised that the nightgown was too tight for her. I know that moment when a piece of clothing seems to impose a norm that your body does not meet. I still buy the negligé, albeit with mixed feelings. I need it to finish my thesis.