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Friday, October 10, 2008

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Vintage: a well kept secret

BY ANNA ZALOKOSTAS

In print | October 11, 2007

There’s much more to Philadelphia than cheesesteak, as I learned when I set out to discover some of the coolest places around to shop for great vintage finds. Apparently I was slow on the uptake because designers Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui, Tory Burch, Donna Karan and Jean-Paul Gaultier all agree that Philadelphia is great for vintage shopping each has found inspiration for collections in various boutiques around the Philly area.

Decades Vintage, located at 615 Bainbridge Street, is a particular favorite amongst the most well-known of designers, and usually carries very of-the-moment vintage clothes that show up in couture designer collections on runways months later. Though it has a great selection, Decades Vintage is truly a designer vintage store, which means that everything’s very expensive and probably out of any college student’s budget. Vagabond Boutique, a combination yarn and clothing boutique on 37 N 3rd Street in Old City, is another great place to shop, both when it comes to contemporary designers and vintage clothes. Though their selection of vintage is small, it is priced cheaper than the regular clothes.

Still, it’s not as great of a find as Retrospect, the most recommended place for great vintage shopping. With rows of hip 80s jeans, cute cardigans, classic vintage dresses and stacks of cowboy boots, Retrospect, located at 534 South Street, is probably the best place to shop vintage on a budget. Though the clothing isn’t cheap, it is very reasonably priced and on Wednesdays, students get a 15% discount by showing a college I.D.

Further down South Street is Antiquarian’s Delight, which houses about two dozen flea-market-type stalls that sell everything from vintage clothing to old photos, jewelry and sunglasses. Vendors are willing to negotiate their prices, which is great for those of us who are running low on cash from all those late-night phone calls to Renato’s.

Though vintage shopping in Philadelphia isn’t cheap, it is good very good. And if you search hard enough, you can always find great hand-crocheted sweaters, broken-in jeans and flowery dresses at reasonable prices that are much lower than they would be at big, trendy retail stores.

Even if you don’t plan on buying anything from the higher-end designer vintage boutiques, they’re still worth checking out, if only for the window shopping and long sighs of I wish I could afford it. Hopefully, that will provide some incentive to come back to campus and finish that political science paper, so that one day, you too can have a salary.

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