How to Spot Vintage Items in a Thrift Store

Video Transcript

Alright so when you enter the thrift store it's pretty overwhelming. In most cases things aren't organized very well. Just thrown on shelves. Organized by womens and sizes and what not. In some instances, with little more of the savvy thrift stores, they'll have sections that is alternative or unique or vintage retro items. Now obviously you want to make a V line right over there because you're going to find exactly what you're looking for. But that's kind of rare to find. In most cases they just incorporate the vintage clothing right in with the modern clothing and anything else for that matter. So I want to help you to know how to spot the vintage items. Now depending on what you're looking for, I'm just suggesting some ideas, how you can keep your eyes open for these items. When you look through the racks, kind of look for fabric that obviously don't look very modern. If you see something like this or with some torn on it, you know it's going to be vintage so I just look down the racks, and my eye, after awhile you'll start to develop an eye where you'll notice the older fabric as opposed to the newer fabric. And when you look at things, I like to look for tags, for example, this one does have a tag, sometimes they fall out or people will cut them out because they're scratchy. I don't know if you can read that here, but Safinia, this one here was a Sacs Fifth Avenue exclusive. It's probably somebody's prom dress. I found this actually, not at a thrift store but at a Cross Road, so also some of those old trade stores such as Buffalo Exchange or Cross Roads, you can find some really cool vintage there too. I found this one here, and it was only $20. If you get lucky you might find something like that where it's still in pretty good condition. So that's some of the ways that you can spot it. So keep your eyes open for the fabrics, check the labels, and another interesting way to find if something is vintage; not all the time, but this is a really good sign of quality, is back in the day they would make some really nice long hems. With a lot of modern items the hems might come right up to here. You just don't see the big hems anymore. Because I think companies these days just don't want to use too much fabric on the hems. But what's nice about this is, with vintage clothing, if it doesn't fit you well, when you've got a hem like this to work with, if yourself or someone else is going to alter it, you've got something to work with to either shorten or lengthen it without having such a tiny hem. So look for the fabrics, look for labels, spot some things like the hems, just little nuances that you can tell it's not a modern piece. So that's some ways you can keep your eyes open when you're shopping at a thrift store to find those vintage pieces.

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