Thrifty chic

Thrifty Birthday Girl


Thrifty thinking, once the preserve of misers and cheap dates, is officially cool. As illustrated by JWT's campaign for Thrifty car rental, people are having fun with thrift. That means it's seeping into popular culture (for example, Thrifty ads are giving rise to copycat spoofs on YouTube). Thrifty thinking has become a positive lifestyle choice, a movement no less.

Thrifty thinking is such an engaging concept because it's a game of wits. You can try to beat the system, always getting the better deal, whether it's buying on the sales and getting twice as much, or shopping at a discount department store and passing it off as designer. It's not just about getting things cheap - it's the payoff when you pull it off as something bigger and shinier. Thrift has attitude.

In the Thrifty campaign, that's the dad taking disproportionate credit for getting his daughter a car (rental) for her birthday. It's Thrifty 'borrowing' someone's high-traffic billboard space round Sydney Airport.

Being thrifty is not exclusive. It works for people of all ages and incomes. As the Entourage boys demonstrate, being a multimillionaire superstar playboy, or one of his hangers on, doesn't preclude thrift. Vince orders the most expensive steak on the menu as a takeout when his business lunch goes sour. Drama steals batteries from recording studios for his (very) personal shaver.

With the mainstreaming of green or 'caring' consumption (think Anya Hindmarch's 'I'm not a plastic bag' - environmentally caring, oh! so desirable and the godmother of caring handbags), being thrifty is no longer pejorative. If you're thrifty, it's not that you're cheap, you're just putting more thought into what you buy. You're not a merchandise monster who's destroying the planet for us all through your out of control consumption.

So, join the backlash against record consumer spending, 'buy' your friends a virtual beer, pull in your purse strings and get some thrift. It's all the rage (and, given the global credit crisis, it's kind of sensible too).