The most recent Jersey Girl Thrift event at Lackawanna Plaza sold out. Completely. And if you missed it, you weren’t alone — Montclair Pod co-host Farnoosh Torabi had tickets and had to bail at the last minute when her schedule blew up. She spent weeks hearing about it afterward: the energy, the crowd, the finds.
So she tracked down the co-founders — Larell Scardelli and Kelli Buschinski — to get the inside story on what Jersey Girl Thrift actually is, how it works, and why it seems to be hitting Montclair exactly right, exactly now.
What is Jersey Girl Thrift?
Jersey Girl Thrift is a pop-up clothing swap based in New Jersey, built around a simple premise: everyone has a closet full of things they never wear. What if getting rid of them was fun?
The concept, as described on their website, is a boutique thrifting experience — clean, curated, and community-sourced — that stands in deliberate contrast to the typical thrift store experience. Their own comparison puts it plainly: traditional thrifting can be dirty, tiring, overwhelming, and time-consuming. Jersey Girl Thrift aims to be clean, curated, inclusive, and fun.
The mechanics are equally straightforward. You buy a ticket — the only thing you’ll pay for all day. You bring a bag of gently-loved clothes, shoes, or accessories. You get a big brown bag and shop whatever everyone else has brought. The clothes are not individually priced — everything on the racks is free with your entry ticket. Quality is hand-controlled by Scardelli and Buschinski before anything hits the floor, which means no digging through pilled sweaters or items with mystery stains.
As Scardelli explained on the pod: “We pop up at different businesses all over Montclair, we’ve been in Verona, neighboring towns, and we set it up basically like a store. So you buy a ticket in advance and you come, you clean out your closet. Anything that’s gently loved but needs a new home, you pack away. We take shoes, accessories, anything you’re looking to get rid of. If you’ve already cleaned your closet, you can totally come empty-handed.”
What You’ll Actually Find
Don’t let the word “thrift” set low expectations. Recent swaps have featured Madewell denim, vintage Coach, and Anthropologie blouses alongside Y2K gems and other unexpected finds — all quality-controlled by the Jersey Girl Thrift team before they hit the floor.
Buschinski gave some specifics on the pod about the range of inventory: “We have eight to ten clothing racks of sportswear, jeans, dresses, tops, sweaters, jackets. We have tables of accessories, jewelry, sunglasses, shoes, literally anything that you can think of. We always have great raffle prizes. We have snacks. You can take a rest. There’s usually a couch to hang out on. We typically do a craft and it’s just a great two hours.”
And the finds can be genuinely impressive. “We’ve gotten like Rag & Bone jeans with the tags on, Gucci loafers,” Buschinski noted. “But also I think it’s so individual what each person is looking for. Like someone’s coming in looking for a work bag, someone else is coming in looking for new boots. We got these incredible pink rock go-go boots last time.”
One pattern they’ve noticed in Montclair specifically: activewear. “I’ve been noticing a lot of active wear coming in,” Buschinski said. “The last one we got an entire bag of, I think it was Gymshark leggings, just stacks and stacks. Looked like they’d never been worn before.”
On quality, they’re deliberate. “We are always checking for hand feel because it’s very important for us — when we pick a shirt, if it’s going to feel good or feel tacky,” Buschinski explained. “We do reject stuff. If it has cat hair or holes or is pilly or something that we wouldn’t feel excited to pick up, we’re not going to put that on the rack for someone else to weed through.”
The Moment That Keeps Happening
Ask Buschinski and Scardelli what they love most about the events and they’ll tell you about a very specific exchange that happens at nearly every swap.
“The soundbite I heard the most at our last swap was, ‘Oh my God, that was mine,'” Buschinski said, laughing. “Somebody brought something to the swap and we put it out on the floor and then somebody else picked it up and loves it and someone goes, ‘Oh my God, I brought that, that was mine.’ It’s the sweetest moment. It warms my heart every single time. They have a little moment about it and it feels so good to watch your stuff go.”
And there’s a larger emotional current running through all of it. “After the last Montclair event, we got a DM from a girl who came for the first time,” Scardelli shared. “She said, ‘I felt like everywhere I turned, people were hyping me up and I had all my best girlfriends there, just having the experience with me.’ That just gave us chills. That’s exactly what we want to create. It’s a very positive energy feeling. Everybody’s like, ‘I brought that, that looks great on you, I used to wear it like this.’ It really feels like a community event as opposed to just going out shopping by yourself.”
The Bigger Picture
Torabi framed it well on the pod: the thrift economy is not a niche trend anymore. Resale in the U.S. is now a $50 billion-plus market and growing faster than traditional retail, according to the annual resale report from ThredUp. And a large part of why is exactly what Jersey Girl Thrift is tapping: people want to save money, feel good about consumption, and — especially right now — connect with other people while doing it.
Buschinski connected those dots directly. “I think we’ve been hitting this market at the right time,” she said. “It seems like our business, we’ve launched it at the right time and it’s finding its way to serve the people that need it the most. The demand is just incredible. Like we can’t even meet it yet.”
The economics also hold up in a way that more traditional thrift stores don’t. Torabi noted that clothing while quality has generally declined over the past decade, manufacturing costs have risen, and brands have responded by using cheaper materials. A garment from 2019 often feels more substantial than something bought new today. The secondhand market, as a result, isn’t just a budget play — it’s sometimes a quality play.
Who’s Behind It
Jersey Girl Thrift was co-founded and is curated by Larell Scardelli and Kelli Buschinski, two New Jersey friends who turned a shared love of fashion, sustainability, and community into what they call — with some resistance to the word — a “full-time side hustle.”
“I run another business,” Buschinski explained on the pod. “I’m a marketing copywriter for a health and wellness brand, so this is my second business. And Kelli is in production and she has a full-time business. So this is like our side thing — but we don’t like to say ‘side hustle’ because it’s main in our hearts.”
Torabi summed it up: “It’s a full-time side hustle.” Both of them laughed.
The operation is still largely manual — the two of them hand-sorting everything, renting trucks, managing logistics — but it’s growing. “We get better and better every time we do a swap,” Buschinski said.
Their mission, as they describe it on their website, is to make “the thrill of the thrift — the joy of the find — the wild and chic world of style accessible through collective, sustainable experiences.”
What’s Next
The most recent JGT x Montclair Flea Swap — held in late February at Lackawanna Station — also sold out. That’s two consecutive sold-out Montclair events.
Tickets are not sold at the door, so if you want in on the next one, the move is to get on their newsletter now. Subscribers get first access to ticket drops before they go public.
The best way to stay in the loop:
- Website: jerseygirlthrift.com
- Instagram: @jerseygirlthrift
- Newsletter: Sign up at jerseygirlthrift.com — this is where ticket access lives first
As Buschinski put it: “This is the only way I want to shop going forward. It’s the easiest way. It makes the most sense. The energy is just so positive.”
