Where is my Cheap Date?

Zines that are irregular, uncontactable, unheard of and difficult to track down are usually also wonderful, awe-inspiring and end up being the ones that you treasure the most.  However Refinery29’s recent review of Bay Garnett and Kira Jolliffe’s book ‘A Cheap Date Guide to Style’ (which I reviewed a year ago…), prompted me to go hunt down my two issues of Cheap Date that I have which is the issue last published, I believe.  From about 1997, Kira Jolliffe started up the zine in London which then decamped to New York and then back again and now it ceases to exist, yet those two singular issues are still imprinted in my memory.  Fashion randomness, pro-vintage and pro-thrifting aren’t novel ideas but this zine existed in a time before the words ‘vintage’ and ‘charity shops’ were used as smug labels, and at the time, it was all a little revelatory to pre-thrifting/vintage buying me…   

Much to my horror, my two issues that I stowed away are now missing and holding on to vague memories of the zine are leaving me very distraught indeed.  I may have to hunt down either Bay Garnett or Kira Jolliffe and beg them to sell me the back issues so that I can fully regress and get back into the fashion randomness that I so love that included The Cheap Date team hanging old vintage clothes on the rails in designer stores and photographing the results.