Here's something new: Saturday is the first international Vintage Store Day.
Emma Lewis, the owner of
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'We're very, very pleasantly surprised for the first year,' Lewis said in a recent phone call. 'It's as grass roots as it gets.'
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Plenty of the participating shop owners have told her that the creation of a Vintage Store Day feels 'overdue,' she said.
Jeans from Groovy Thifty.
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'We've seen lines down the block for Record Store Day,' Lewis said. Another inspiration for the vintage store event is
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Stores around Boston that have signed on for the inaugural Vintage Store Day include
Sadie MacIver opened her garden-level
'It's all high-quality and niche,' MacIver said.
She maintains a wide range of price points. Some of her rarer inventory, going back to the 1960s and '70s, is priced for collectors, she said, 'but I also recognize that my demographic is college students. I'm 10 minutes from BU. I remember being in college, when I did not have $80 to spend on a T-shirt.'
At her own store in Chicago, Lewis sells vintage apparel, home goods, and jewelry. But she specializes in antique art prints.
'For me, it's about historic preservation,' she said. 'I'm keeping these pieces alive, and out of the landfill.'
For many vintage shop owners, sustainability has become a key by-product of their business. Consumers are more attuned than ever, they say, to the drawbacks of the 'fast fashion' industry and big-box retail, including environmental damage and the exploitation of underpaid workers.
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At Nest in Portsmouth, Ardito gets excited when a shopper buys a functional piece of home decor from her rather than spending at Target or Walmart.
'Instead of going to a big-box store looking for a plant stand, they buy something from me that has oodles of character and patina,' she said. 'I love bringing a piece of furniture back from the brink, refurbishing it, and it becomes somebody else's new heirloom.'
She abides by a favorite quote from William Morris, the 19th-century architect and designer associated with the Victorian-era Arts and Crafts Movement in England: 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'
Ardito also has a motto she came up with on her own.
'We're saving the planet, and being badass doing it,' she said with a laugh.
James Sullivan can be reached at
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