Let’s face it: In this struggling economy, we are definitely pinching our pennies, especially when it comes to fashion. The pickings often seem slim in SLC, feeling like Pib’s and Decades are all we have apart from the clone-like Deseret Industries.

This prompted me to do something I never do: go out of my comfort zone by venturing past 2100 South to see what other stores are out in this great Salt City. I know that there are places like Savers and Salvation Army in West Valley City, but that kind of a location is crazy talk, and the ones I’ve heard about in Sandy are supposed to have nice stuff, but I made a promise to those douchebags of southern origin that if they stay out of my tranny, fag lovin’ neighborhood, I won’t venture into theirs.

It seems that the perfect solution is 3300 South, a veritable thrift thoroughfare. In fact, there are so many stores full of previously loved materials that my challenge turned out to be finding one and committing. So I did what any clothes whorin’ shopaholic would do, and chose three.

I decided to take three very different stores with three very different aesthetics and see what the difference was: Name Droppers, located just off of 3300 South and Highland Drive, Consignment Circuit at 1464 E. and 3300 South and finally, Thrift Town on the corner of 1300 East and 3300 South. I chose these three because of the very different brands, styles and atmospheres they offer.

The difference between thrift and consignment has nothing to do with the buyer. Stores like Pib’s give you cash for clothes, stores like the DI take donations and consignment is where some old Walker Lane bitty retires her Miu Miu heels or her new Birkin bag at a label whore graveyard till someone takes pity on its leather hide and buys it, giving the bitty a portion of the profits.

Name Droppers is a high-end consignment boutique. Walking into the showroom is like walking into a department store: It’s very clean, beautiful and well lit. The space is filled with vintage showcases full of purses, jewelry and racks upon racks of designer label things. The entire downstairs is dedicated to shoes—I could write a whole piece on that for another issue.

My good friend Ashley Lingwall is the head sales girl there and she helped me piece together a couple of bourgeois fit-outs. The first I tried on was a little too Paris Hilton: a sequin dress and a handbag whose original price was around $2,000, and the outfit came in at just over that. That is not thrift shopping. Our second outfit, which came to $729.73, was still a little too upscale for this punk rock princess, but more realistic finds such as a really nice (for someone else) Missoni dress for $186, Christian Dior sunglasses that I would buy for $75 (a steal) and a plastic oversized heart ring for 11 bucks. Name Droppers is the place I will go to first when I vacation in St. Tropez or attend a wedding in Tahoe.