“It all started in sixth grade. I was the tallest girl in my school, and I couldn’t find jeans that were long enough. My mom said, ‘Why don’t I just make your jeans?,’ and that just really struck me as a new concept,” said Ashley Strickland, a senior journalism major. Even now she wears mostly homemade garments, some of them from high school.

Strickland is lucky: Her entire awkward middle school phase was augmented by a wardrobe created by a talented mother.

“She was saving up for her going back to school, and … she thought, ‘For the money I have, I could get so much more out of this if I made my own wardrobe,’” said Strickland, who writes for The Red & Black.

Strickland grew up in a situation where everything she wore was unique, and putting time into making her clothing was an alternative to shopping. Her weekends were spent going to fabric stores and assembling something to wear on Monday instead of looking for the closest fit.

“I decided one time to splurge because recently a lot of stores have started making longer jeans,” she said. “I bought a pair of pants from Nordstrom, and the first day I wore them, they started coming apart. [My mother] basically had to pull them apart and remake them.”

Making your own clothes is a potentially valuable alternative to shopping, especially if you seek designer-level quality in your clothing.

However, for college students on a serious budget or people who simply don’t have the time commitment to learn how to create clothing, there are other economically, and even ecologically, friendly options.

Anyone can put together stylish, quality outfits without regretting the purchase of something expensive that quickly falls out of style. It simply requires a little consideration as to what to wear in the future.

Erin Wilson, a junior double majoring in psychology and public relations, finds she adjusts clothing that doesn’t fit her to create most of her wardrobe when shopping in vintage and used clothing stores.

“It seems completely wasteful to spend as much money as some people spend on certain clothes,” she said. “The amount of clothes that are created all the time is insane. At least if I’m using something that’s already been made I’m not creating waste.”

Wilson taught herself how to sew, but her grandparents also knew how to maintain clothing.

“My grandpa used to turn collars inside-out and sew them back on,” she said. “It’s a really undervalued skill.”

Others shop vintage out of concern for authenticity at a time when the vintage look is in vogue.

“Athens has a big hipster scene, and for the most part people are kind of taking a value of resources and sustainability,” said Athens resident Casey Browning. “If you walk into Walmart today, there are plaid shirts for people who are in the market for vintage. It’s all new things made to look old.”

Shopping at thrift stores for interesting clothing is nothing new – and neither is emulating older styles to sell to people once said style comes back into fashion.

“Fashion constantly repeats itself; right now it’s sort of early ’90s, if you can imagine,” said Janice Bryan, the owner of downtown vintage shop Minx. “But style never goes out of style. Respect for your general fashion just looks good.”

Taking advantage of this cycle to sell to customers is what consignment shops have been doing for decades. When you buy clothing at a vintage shop, what you pay for, essentially, is the luxury of not doing all of the traveling to antique and vintage shops and sifting through loads and loads of clothes to find a salable piece.

“I spend anywhere from 24 to 30 hours per week, taking full 12-hour days, doing that,” Bryan said. “I love going into the mountains and little country shops to find things.”

Dynamite, another used garment store located downtown, caters to a students looking for a store to compliment their busy lifestyle.

“Students can come in here and grab something, change and then wear it to class,” said Lori Paluck, the shop’s proprietor. “The things in here are better-made, have more style, are [made from] better fabric and they’re unique. The chances are pretty slim that someone else is going to have your outfit.”

Clothing at consignment shops is handpicked by the owner and restored if there are any problems with the garment.

“Occasionally I repair a hole or replace a button if the item is really killer and unique,” Paluck said. “I think there is a stigma with used clothing, but it’s a great way to recycle fashion.”

Items sold at stores in town are red hot. Airee Hong, owner of the clothing co-op Agora, said the sorts of pieces one finds at cheap-chic shops are usually out of her store the day they are first set on the racks.

“We took all of these old skirts, shortened them, then made them high-waisted,” she said. “Urban Outiffters sells them for $80.”

Agora is, if not visibly, theoretically split into 50 booths, each containing items from distinctly different suppliers. Many are full of gently used dresses, shirts and shoes, some have vintage-style bicycles, while others are stacked full of boxes of vinyl and comics. The front of the store is laden with jewelry and glasses from every age, style and conception.

“I could never afford buying a $400 vase as a student,” Hong said. “There’s no reason to be buying stuff in Target when it will wear out in a few months. Of course, with the economy recently, people would rather be wearing nice clothes than sitting on nice furniture.”

It’s not only a matter of finding something at radically different prices than those of retailers watching the trend toward retooling older fashion – it’s also about pieces that last.

“Much of what was made recently falls apart more quickly because they aren’t [made with] naturally occurring fibers,” Bryan said. “Part of it was responding to the ’60s, when more people could buy more.”

The return to classic, lasting clothing is probably most visible to the fashion uninitiated in the realm of men’s fashion.

Atlanta resident Matt Seymour is a personal shopper at the J. Crew store in Atlanta’s Lenox Mall. A personal shopper is someone who advises people on what outfits to wear on a regular basis. Seymour puts outfits together for clients, sometimes by season, month or week, and at other times immediately.

“I think that men, in general, shop out of a necessity. I think that’s the way men have been shopping for a long time, unless they are into fashion,” he said. “What I’m finding is that older men have known this, while college kids are tired of screening a brand, tired of that teenage look, but don’t want to pay Ralph Lauren prices. They’re just looking for one or two things, and they don’t go looking very often.”

Seymour sees notes that, while men’s shopping patterns haven’t changed (that is to say, they seldom shop), he does recognize a return to a classic look.

“Japan actually has a very high influence on American fashion – more than we probably know.

High-end denim and $70 work shirts aren’t always affordable to students, but they can represent a smart decision economically. Seymour recommends identifying classic styles that will be around after this year is over. Flannels and desert boots may be hot now, but consider the fact that bright pink and yellow might be unwearable flannel colors in the future.

For men, a conservative approach with wise, sustainable clothing choices may be an alternative to the disposable fashion of today.

Though there may be fewer secondhand choices for men in consignment shops, tailoring pieces that don’t fit in order to expand one’s range of choices is not out of the question. Before box retailer culture, tailoring was a normal part of buying clothes anyway, and clothes weren’t made to fit.

“We all put up with what’s out there,” Strickland said. “It’s all shapeless. We all walk around looking like a bunch of bag ladies. If you don’t like what’s out there, don’t buy into it.”