Lara Spencer loves a good thrift find. “I’ve been thrifting and going to yard sales since I was very young,” Lara, the Emmy-award winning anchor and host of Good Morning America, tells Westport Lifestyle. “My mom had a great eye and loved hunting for vintage furniture to restore. She would bring me everywhere with her, and that’s really where it all began for me.” Lara has been sharing this passion of hers for years: she wrote a book, I Brake for Yard Sales, chronicling her secondhand shopping secrets; she created and hosted HGTV’s Flea Market Flip, which aired from 2012-2019; and she often shows off her incredible vintage finds on her Instagram, @lara.spencer. Now, Lara is back with another treasure-hunting series, this time in her own backyard of Fairfield County.
Lara is the executive producer and host of That Thrifting Show, which premiers on Thursday, March 19 at 9 p.m. on Freeform, with the first six episodes available to stream on Hulu the next day. Each of the 12 episodes of the series features two interior-design duos, who hunt for beautiful, unique vintage and thrift store finds to create a magazine-worthy room, with only two days and a $2,000 budget. Style experts Robert Hartwell, Dani Klaric, and Preston Konrad will judge the thrifted designs, and some of the featured designers may be familiar faces to Westport Lifestyle readers, including our contributor Zac Mathias. “I love seeing how into thrifting and upcycling my kids and their friends are,” Lara says of her desire to bring a new thrifting show to streaming. “There’s a whole new audience that really understands and respects sustainable design. The idea of creating a room using only vintage and antique pieces found at thrift shops and estate sales just felt right for this moment.”
Much of the show was shot here in Fairfield County, too. (Lara has lived here since just before her first child was born.) “It was such a joy to bring viewers to some of my favorite places and to highlight the wonderful people who run them,” she says. “We live in an area where people are incredibly generous with donations of furniture, accessories, and art to local charity thrift shops. That makes these places so fun to shop. I think viewers are going to be amazed by what our teams found and how they transformed those pieces into stunning rooms.” Not to mention that when we’re watching, we have the added bonus of being able to visit those same shops and create our own home-decor magic. “Watching [the designers] unload vans filled to the brim with furniture, art, and rugs they had scored at local consignment shops and thrift stores was so exciting. We were sometimes a little jealous–we wanted to shop with them!”
Offscreen, Lara shares her eye for amazing finds locally at Fairfield County Antique & Design: she and her partner, Lisa Richardson, have a booth called Le Tigre in the Norwalk space. “We joke that we are saving the world one vintage piece at a time!” says Lara. “She and I have been friends since nursery school in Garden City, New York, and our moms taught us everything we know about ‘the hunt.’ We honor them with our booth filled with pieces we know they would love. Our style is elegant, eclectic, and fun. Come see for yourself!” And you can feel good about your purchases there, too: proceeds support the North Shore Animal League (@animalleague), the world’s largest no-kill shelter for dogs and cats. “Any money donated goes toward rescuing these precious animals. It’s only about an hour’s drive from Westport, and they take such good care of these animals. Both of our babies are from there, Riva the retriever mix and Betty the corgi,” says Lara.
Whether on TV, on social media, or in-person, Lara says she loves showing others that “thrifting can be chic.” Her top tip? “If it makes you happy and you have a spot for it, buy it,” she says. “When I find a vintage piece that makes me happy and works in our space, I get it. I know I can always find a place for it, and if not, it goes to my shop at the Fairfield County A&D Center. I know someone else will love it.” Locally, she says she “can’t drive on the Post Road in Westport” without stopping at Furniture On Consignment II (1433 Post Rd. E) “The owner, Jim, is wonderful and generous and had great ideas for the teams [on the show] who asked him to help curate pieces with a certain look,” she says. Other favorites include the Greenwich Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Shop, and auction houses like Modern Day Auctions and Black Rock Galleries. She also loves Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market in New Milford, where she scored one of her recent favorite finds. “I bought dozens of watercolors depicting African animals and landscapes from her homeland of Tanzania. They were unframed, and it’s been a joy finding just the right vintage frames for each of them,” Lara says. “Jason at Frame & Save on the Norwalk/Westport border has helped me frame and mat over 30 of them, and I love them all.”
Ultimately, there’s a thrill that comes with rescuing a piece and giving it new life, and that’s what the show–and in some ways, Lara herself–is all about. Thrifting is an investment you can really can feel good about, she says. “It’s so rewarding knowing that these discarded things we find at thrift shops, which still have so much design value left in them, are getting a second look and being used in new and unexpected ways.”
That Thrifting Show premiers on Thursday, March 19 at 9 p.m. on Freeform, with the first six episodes available to stream on Hulu the next day.