It's ADOREable

I was meeting a friend at La Farm -  a tasty local bakery and restaurant - for lunch the other day. A few doors down from the restaurant is the Cary location of ADORE Designer Resale Boutique. I  always planned to check it out, but usually I am either running late for lunch or late for whatever I have going on after lunch or (and this is the most likely scenario) late for both, so I have never had the chance, but on this day I was a whopping 30 minutes early so check it out I did.

ADORE Resale Boutique

Now I have talked about my thrifting addiction before. Rarely does a week go by that I am not in a thrift store somewhere in the Triangle, looking for the perfect pair of old lady shoes or mid-century modern something, but shopping at ADORE should in NO WAY be confused with shopping at Goodwill. It is more on par with a high-end designer boutique. The biggest differences are there is way more stock than in a true boutique; much, but not all, of that stock has been worn before; and the prices are slightly less jaw-droppingly high. Slightly.

The shop itself is really attractive with nice displays through-out, and the equally attractive saleswomen was very friendly and helpful. And oh, the beautiful things they had. Jimmy Choo, Channel, Michael Kors. About the lowest end items I saw were a few pairs of Talbot shoes and an Ann Taylor skirt. Like I said before, not everything was used. I'd say maybe as much as 20% of the items still had the original tags on them.

Yankee swears that I can walk into any store and instantly hone in on the most expensive item there. I say it has more to do with good taste than actual dollar amount. It was either naturally inherited or nurtured into me by my parents. Either way, it happened in the form of a St. John red coat with faux fur trim dyed to match, except one touch  let me know the fur was not faux at all. The sales lady said it was beaver. I did not even bother to price it, since I knew it would be way out of my range and even if I could afford it, I would have to keep it hidden from Daughter and her vegetarian ways.

My fabulously fashionable gloves

Instead, I settled for a beautiful double breasted red wool gabardine coat and the most fabulous gloves ever. They are vintage black kid leather with white kid trim hand stitched inside. You can wear them up for a classic black glove look or  you can fold them over to show the white part if you are in a super-cool mood. The leather is so soft, just touching them is a joy. Though they are probably at least twenty years old, they had never been worn and still had the little hand written price tag and size tag on the inside.  My guess is no one could fit into them. I have surprisingly tiny hands and there were snug on me, but I bought them anyway, figuring they'll stretch a little over time.

Adorable red coat.

Overall, I rate ADORE fabulous, and I'll try to plan a little extra time to stop by whenever I have a La Farm lunch date. It will never take the place of my first love of digging around in the shelves and racks of a true thrift store though.