Marlo Korman’s store just off of Milwaukee’s Brady Street, Desired Attire, is a secondhand shop for name brand thrifted finds. Photo courtesy of Desired Attire.

On a sunny April 22 afternoon, students sorted through racks of clothes under one of the tents at the Marquette University Student Government’s Earth Day farmers market.

The market was one of the various venues where 23-year-old Desired Attire owner Marlo Korman has sold her thrifted finds. Her store, just off of Milwaukee’s Brady Street, is a secondhand shop for name brand thrifted finds. She also sells goods online through Whatnot, a platform where sellers show items in a live video and customers bid on them in real time.

Korman gets her products from going to thrift stores herself or from individuals looking to sell her their clothes, often through social media. After a prospective seller reaches out to her, she makes them an offer.

Her goal is to pay sellers more for their clothes than other secondhand stores, she said, to ensure they are being paid what the clothes are worth.

Her bestselling brands include Lululemon and Alo Yoga, she said, though her store also has a $5 bin with less expensive brands. If the product doesn’t sell, the $5 bin becomes a $2 bin. If the clothes still don’t sell, she donates them back to other thrift stores.

But Korman doesn’t just resell clothes to make a profit.

“There are way too many clothes going into the landfill and dump, and fast fashion is definitely a problem in our community,” she said. “I would love to do what I can to help save all that and find a new home for everything.”

In the instance of that April 22 afternoon, Korman’s items made their way home to Marquette University students. Jessica Wrobel, a sophomore in the College of Nursing, visited Desired Attire’s booth and left with a t-shirt. 

“I thrift because it’s cheaper,” she said. “I think style is one of those things where it’s cool to wear pieces that are unique and other people don’t typically wear.”

Abbi Thompson, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences and MUSG sustainability coordinator, selected Desired Attire for the market in an effort to get students to make the sustainable choice of shopping second hand.

“My committee is focused on easy swaps students can make in their lives,” she said.

Korman’s business also encourages customers — specifically young adults — to purchase secondhand clothing by offering trendy styles at an affordable price point.

Now in her seventh year in business, Korman boasts nearly 12,000 followers on Instagram and recently hired her first two employees to work in the physical store.

When she started at 16 years old, she ran her business out of her closet, which was home to unwanted, sellable clothes. Korman and other students in her high school would exchange these clothes in person at school. 

But she eventually ran out of clothes to sell, so she decided to start thrifting. After customers started asking if she could ship products, her business began to grow.

From there, she started setting up shop at local events, like the Earth Day farmers market.

“I fell in love with the process of setting up, actually meeting the people in person and conversing with them,” she said.

As Korman began to host more events, she decided she wanted to do them every single day. To accomplish that, she said, she took a risk and took out a $20,000 loan to open her own in-person thrift store. With the physical store, she could accommodate more customers and communicate with them directly each day, she said.

In addition to housing her own operations, Korman said her store also fulfills a need in Milwaukee. With few stores in the city that sell name-brand, thrifted clothes, she said, Desired Attire saves shoppers the time of sorting through rack after rack at places like Goodwill.

“In the future [I] want to turn it into a professional storefront, maybe open another location and create a whole team,” she said.

This story was written by Mina Marsolek-Bonnet. She can be reached at [email protected].