This Sunday the weather was amazing, making it perfect for exploration! This week, I went to check out the Cure Thrift Shop in the East Village! The last time I went to Cure was probably around, 2012? So while not an entirely new to me thrift shop, it has been a very long time since my last visit and I was excited to check it out! I initially discovered Cure way back in 2010 when they were very active on tumblr (and so was I!), they had an awesome internet presence highlighting cool things that came into the shop, and posted about different sales they would have on different days of the week for tumblr followers, students, people with Type 1 diabetes, etc. Diabetes may sound like a strange subgroup of shoppers, but it's what makes Cure Thrift Shop unique - the profits are donated to Type 1 diabetes research and advocacy!
Address: 111 E 12th Street, New York, NY 10003
Cure Thrift Shop is a mid-range thrift shop with men and women's clothing, accessories, home furnishings, dishware and knick knacks.
A few things that make Cure Thrift Shop unique:
- They regularly have massive sales (ie, 1/2 off all clothing, accessories and shoes), and certain days of the week have sales for certain groups, to which everyone is likely to belong to at least one! They also used to do these massive "dollar sales" (TBD if they still happen), where you would go down to the lower level, which would just be a massive pile of clothing, and every item in it was $1. SCORE! I still have items from deep diving those sales my freshman year of college.
- They are a 501(c)3 charity, so you can feel good about not only making a sustainable choice to refresh your wardrobe, but also that the money you are spending is going to help others!
- Lots of vintage and antique home goods, at thrift store prices.
There were a few things I noticed on this trip that were a little disappointing from my trips back in college...Namely, things had become more expensive. Back in the day, clothing items seemed to be in the $15-$60 range and housewares around $5-25 for knick knacks. This trip, most clothing was starting around $30, which surprised me, because even items like a Zara body suit, were priced near retail. It's great the money is going to a good cause, but some pricing seemed high for a thrift store. It was also insanely crowded! Perhaps because it was a beautiful weekend day, but wow, could hardly walk around the store! The proximately to NYU had it infested with what seemed like groups of women on college tours or bachelorette parties. Glad people are excited about secondhand fashion, but definitely made it difficult to walk around as the store is filled to the brim!
Definitely worth a visit if traipsing around the East Village, there are lots of gems! It's also open later than a lot of other thrift stores (9PM), so it can be a good end of the night stop if doing a thrift store crawl.
It was great to revisit Cure, and I'm excited to explore somewhere brand new next week!