Thrifting Comes of Age
ENTREPRENEURS FIND A NEW SUSTAINABLE NICHE WITH VINTAGE GOODS
By Liam Gorman
From the pages of our May/June 2023 Issue.
AS THE SAYING GOES, “Everything old is new again,” and nothing could be more true for a growing number of entrepreneurs who have taken that ethos to heart to build something new from some- thing old: vintage and second-hand goods businesses.
Rebecca Barnini, owner of Circa in Pittsfield, enjoys the creature comforts of running a vintage furniture store. OLIVIA DOUHAN
Over the past few years, more than a few businesses from North Adams to Great Barrington have been popping up to offer vintage items for sale. From t-shirts to furniture to vinyl to upcycled second-hand clothes, these upstarts are catering to a generation that appreciates the uniqueness only age can bring.
“I was picking vintage pieces when I was, like, 17 years old. It was just stuff that was different and not cookie-cutter, not what everyone else had or was wearing,” says Samantha White, who in 2021 turned her eye for older items into a vintage shop in North Adams called Terra.
A pristinely curated space, White’s store feels like a time-capsule from some undefined era full of small decorative pieces you might have seen on Mad Men or jewelry from The Golden Girls or even jeans seen on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
“I like to call them ‘flavors,’ different flavors of vintage,” says White. “There are t-shirts, cottagecore type clothing, there’s groovy psychedelic clothing. I like to have something weird for everyone, but I feel like my niche is really in the mid-century housewares.”
As if on cue, a repeat customer walks into the shop in search of a spoon rest and a compact mirror.
“I’ve been coming to the store since it opened. Actually, I got my favorite pair of shoes here,” recalls Justin O’Connor, an MCLA admissions counselor. “It’s good to buy things that already have memories with them. You can feel that something’s been loved when you get it that way.”
Whether it be nostalgia, style, or giving a second-hand item a new life, the market for all flavors of vintage goods is booming.
“All the auction houses are finding mid-century and vintage to sell because it’s hot,” says Rebecca Barnini, owner of Circa in Pittsfield. “People generally come in here and then ask, ‘Are there any other antique shops around?’ I hear that all the time, and I’m, like, ‘Well we’re not really an antique shop,’ but people don’t know the distinction.”
Jake Seeley, aka “The Unabinner,” shows off some of his offerings at a recent pop-up market. His latest and greatest finds for sale can be found @theunabinner on Instagram. LIAM GORMAN
And there is a distinction. The general rule for items to be considered antique is they must have hit the century mark. For something to be considered vintage, it just has to survive through its teens and hit 20. Or if you’re in vintage furniture, like Barnini, 25 years old is the milestone that must be met.
Most of Circa’s inventory is mid-century modern Danish furniture, the elegant yet functional designs coveted by collectors. But Barnini doesn’t limit herself to just this niche of the market. “I sell anything from the ’40s through ’90s. Anything that’s vintage,” she says. “Now things in the ’90s are vintage, which makes me feel old.”
Hardly. And the business of selling vintage hasn’t gotten old for her either. “People come in here and see Topo Gigio in the corner, and they freak out. ‘This is fantastic! I remember this!’ That’s another reason I like to sell vintage is that people connect with it when they come in.”
There was a time when thrifting meant going to Goodwill or a flea market, but these new vintage sellers have made it their business to do the thrifting for you and curate the best of the thrift bins, estate sales, and even parents’ closets to dig up those one-of-a-kind finds for potential customers.
“I can’t give away my secrets or my spots, but I could say that I’m out searching every day,” says Jake Seeley, known as “The Unabinner” in vintage circles. “I’ll drive three hours if I have to. I’m always trying to buy tees from original owners. That’s some of my favorite stuff to do; they usually have a cool story to tell about it.”
Based in Pittsfield, Seeley specializes in selling vintage t-shirts online and at pop-up markets where his particular taste for pop-culture touchstones can earn him thousands of dollars in just a few hours.
“If you see my house, you’d be, like, ‘Wow, this guy’s a hoarder,’ laughs Seeley. “I have a lot of graphic tees where a kid will say, ‘Holy crap, that looks sweet. I like that graphic’ or ‘I love that cartoon,’ or ‘I saw that movie or my dad showed me this.’ I’ve had customers from eight year olds to 70-year-old men who possibly had that piece when they were younger and want it again. Vintage is liter- ally for everybody.”
Part of the appeal for Seeley is the hunt for that one shirt that could be a true treasure. “You could go to Goodwill and find literally nothing for two weeks straight, and then all of a sud- den you have that one hit that made it all worth it,” he says. “So, it’s about what keeps you grinding, keeps you searching for those treasure pieces.”
Seeley recalls the time when he found a super-rare rap t-shirt from the ’90s featuring recently deceased DMX. “My stomach instantly dropped. I knew exactly what it was,” he says. “I tucked it into my armpit and walked over to the register, paid the $2, went home and posted on my Instagram, and it blew up. I ended up getting $1,100 for that t-shirt, which was insane.”
Instagram isn’t the only place thrifters have connected with customers online. From high-end fashion at The RealReal to Poshmark’s 80 million users to even eBay (now vintage itself; it was founded in 1995), these second-hand sellers have found buyers from all over the world for their vintage goods. Seeley prefers to use an app called Whatnot, based just around auctions, he says. “It’s really beneficial because they have to pay on the spot so there’s no flaking on the sale or people backing out, or any of that. It’s a super legit way to sell.”
While most of these vintage entrepreneurs are busy curating their own collections, a handful of local consignment businesses will help you discover the gold you might have hidden in the back of your closets.
Designer Consigner in Pittsfield doesn’t deal in vintage, but they will happily give your under three-year-old second-hand items a new life and some space on their racks for a cut of the sale.
“I look for things that are in season; I mimic retail,” says owner Amy Kotski. “Once an item is on the rack, it’s here for 90 days. After 90 days, the consigner can get 30 percent in cash on what sold or 40 percent in store credit. The other option, which is more popular, if items don’t sell, I donate to the Berkshire Dream Center and if they agree to that, they get 40 per- cent cash and 50 percent store credit.”
The rewards aren’t just financial. Both buyers and sellers within the vintage and second-hand community talk a lot about sustainability and pushing back on the “fast-fashion” industry—the sector of the clothing business that mass produces prod- ucts as cheaply as possible to take advan- tage of the latest trends.
“Sustainability was the main sort of mission to influence and inspire people to understand this fully,” says Pamela Sarmiento owner of Gold Digger Sustainable Fashion in Great Barrington. The small shop is stocked with women’s designer vintage with the intention of reminding customers that trends come and go, but some things never go out of style.
“Fast fashion contributes to tons of clothing ending up in landfills, and when more people know just to stop consuming it, it does help,” she says. “Also, vintage helps you to have greater style and to be unique in your own way.”
Combining style with sustainability and taking it to another level is a new North Adams business called Wallasauce. Owners and sewing machine magicians Sarah DeFusco and Andrew “Kirby” Casteel are master menders for vintage sellers like The Unabinner, “They can literally make stuff look perfect,” says Seeley. “I trust them enough to hand over $300 to $400 t-shirts to work on.”
But their true passion is combining used materials and second-hand clothes into unique new pieces, a process called “upcycling.”
“Wallasauce is a sustainably based clothing revival compa- ny where we take things that have been unwanted, discard- ed, damaged—whatever—and reuse them in different ways to make different things,” describes DeFusco. “That includes working with a lot of vintage clothing.”
“We get a lot of shirts. Sure, they might be a little stained, but cut the graphic out of there and they can be a sick ‘made from scratch’ shirt,” adds Casteel. “Sometimes, we work with stuff that’s not even super old, but it’s nicer when we do because it’s cooler. It just gives the value so much more because vintage will last forever, and people are loving that style right now.”
Just down the street, one of Wallasauce’s mending clients, Jessica Sweeney, owner of vintage and second-hand store, Savvy Hive, says it’s all about sustainability for her and her customers. “Younger generations are really trying to be authentic and intentional about their impact on the envi- ronment and choosing to shop second-hand more often.”
The ubiquity of quality second-hand clothes makes her mission a bit easier.
“I don’t have to work very hard to source all of this cloth- ing,” says Sweeney, “and I’m even finding other ways, like I can buy pallets of clothes on eBay that are about to go to the landfill and instead I can intercept and resell them.”
Even the vintage furniture world has seen an uptick in the conscientious shopper. “People are caring more about the climate in the last five or six years,” says Circa’s Barnini. ”I think people just want to recycle things more now than they ever used to, instead of buying something new and dumping it in five years because it fell apart.”
Whatever the reasons for more people buying vintage might ultimately be, Barnini sees the surge in vintage businesses as an opportunity for the Berkshires. “Vintage is here to stay, at least for some people—the cool people,” she says with a laugh.