I can't say how many times a customer has called a friend on her cellphone and said that she is currently browisng in a "thrift store" in Takoma Park. Jackie and I try to gently correct the person saying that PollySue's is a "Vintage" shop, and that there is a world of difference between us and say, Value Village on University Blvd. in College Park. What is this difference? And what sets PollySue's inventory apart from a consignment shop, a thrift store, and an antique shop?
First of all, a thrift store is an all donation operation, in which people give their used clothes to a charity so that they can be sold at low cost to people who cannot otherwise afford new clothes. Hopefully (in the case of Good Will and Salvation Army) the proceeds from the sale of donated merchandise will go to a good cause. Those who get the willies about wearing "dead people's clothes" have an aversion to thrift stores, since generally most of the garments come from estates-ie the closets of people who have recently died and have no use for them any more. OF course, there are people who regularly cull their closets of last season's purchases, so not all the clothes at a thrift are of estate origin, but I would estimate that a good 80% of them are. This means that what you find in thrift stores usually is the clothes from some 20-30 years ago since those are the people who have recently died (sorry, there is no way to sugar coat that!) So a thrift store has alot of old people's comfy clothes (elastic pants, polyester mu mus) and the adult wardrobe of people now in their seventies, which would be 1970's and 1980's suits and dresses. Combine clothes like this with contemporary cast offs (the unwearably trendy, the damaged, and the unsellable) and you have the average clothing content of a thrift store. If you go to thrift stores regularly you will find some good vintage pieces (which I will define later) but these a few and far between and avidly sought after by the small army of "pickers" -people who sell vintage clothes on Ebay, the owners of vintage stores, low budget costumers (highschool plays, local theater groups) and the die hard bargain shopper who refuses to pay over $20.00 for any thing regardless of what it is. Don't get me wrong- I love thrift stores. In among the unfashionable junk you can occasionally unearth a treasure and the thrill of discovery is part of the fun. However, I would say of the thousands of garments in a large Value Village perhaps fifty of them are old enough to qualify as "vintage" and only four or five of them have the condition, wearability and style to be seriously considered by a vintage clothing buyer.
Before I define "vintage" I want to explain what a consignment store is. This is a store where people bring in their gently worn contemporary garments to be resold. The consignment store typically keeps 50% of the proceeds from the sale, sometimes more. Consignment stores want contemporary clothes (no older than 5 -6 years) in perfect condition. Since the owners of consignment stores do not go out and seek their garments they can only sell what comes in, which makes a uniform style or quality difficult to maintain. Several area consignment stores deal in second hand designer clothes which a customer can get for much less than they would if they were new.
So- what is "vintage" you may ask? Vintage clothing to me is clothing that is forty or more years old (which now would mean 1970 and older). However, the age itself doesn't make it vintage. Just because a garment was made in 1965 doesn't mean that someone today would want to wear it. Vintage clothes are clothes with the distinction of great quality and craftsmanship, enduring style, and in good to perfect condition. How many times have I come across a wonderful 1950's party dress to find the underarms stained, mothholes in the fabric, the zipper rusted shut! This particular dress would not be able to be worn without extensive rennovation and repair- meaning I would not buy it to begin with. Sadly, since vintage clothes have been worn before, many of them fall into this category and the vintage shop buyer has to be an expert at examining all of the trouble spots for wear and damage. Vintage clothes tend to be from the more exclusive and expensive department store of the past since the higher quality of the garment means it has a longer life. We see lots of dresses from local high- end department stores that no longer exist-Ralieghs, Garfinkels, Lansburghs to name a few. This high quality is also what makes vintage clothes such a bargain- since you are getting coture quailty at a fraction of the price.
A question I am always asked is "How do you get this stuff?" The answer is it is a continual hunt that takes up most of my time. I shop at thrift stores, yes, but only a tiny fraction of the merchandise in the store is found there for the reasons listed above. I go to auctions every week where estates are sold off piece by piece to the highest bidder. This can be a good source of vintage clothes but it is competitive. I also go to estate sales every week for which entry is restricted to a small number of people at a time, the first ones usually grabbing all of the best items. So- the merchandise in a vintage store, rather than being donated like a thrift store or brought in by consigners like a consignment store is hunted down piece by piece by the buyers- in our case by myself, Jackie and Mark. The clothing often requires cleaning and minor repair which the vintage clothing dealer must be an expert in.
'Antique' clothing is a category of vintage that is usually restricted to serious collectors and costume designers who want to copy the look for a play. This is defined as clothing 70 years or older-dating from pre 1940. This is the clothing on the walls at Pollysue's, and because of its age it is very fragile. It is usually more suited to a display rather than actual wear, and its tiny size usually limits the number of contemporary people who can actually fit in it.
I could write so much more about my now 13 year quest for vintage clothing, and perhaps will when I have more time. I hope this blog entry has answered a few frequently asked questions about the nature of what we are trying to do.
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