Ellie Nowakowski
Mitch Hammes brought his vintage stock from La Crosse to Madison to open Singlestitch on State Street.
What started as a hobby in high school quickly grew into a business for 21-year-old Mitch Hammes, owner of Singlestitch, which opened Sept. 4 at 214 State St.
Singlestitch features vintage streetwear from mainly the 1980s and 1990s, including T-shirts, outerwear, denim and bottoms. The name Singlestitch refers to a thrifting rule-of-thumb as to what to look for in T-shirts. Those from the’90s are finished using a single stitch at the hem and shoulder, rather than the double stitch often used on clothing now.
Hammes opened his first store, La Crosse Vintage, in La Crosse in 2019. When the lease on the La Crosse space ended this year, Hammes focused on moving the business to Madison.
“I want to make a positive impact on how Madison views fashion,” Hammes says. He also hopes to get rid of “the stigma of secondhand clothing.”
Hammes spent two weeks transporting inventory from La Crosse. Now, clothes in the shop are neatly organized by category and color. A rainbow of vintage shirts hangs on a rack that runs down the center of the store. Fleece, sweatshirts and outerwear occupy the perimeter. A rack in the back holds all UW-Madison gear and on another hang pants, mainly vintage Levi’s.
That’s not all. Hammes also stocks shoes and hats as well as some non-clothing items such as DVDs and old Polaroid cameras. Vintage posters, toys and Wheaties boxes decorate the walls above the racks of clothing. The most coveted vintage finds hang from the ceiling on full display.
What makes a good vintage piece? “Nostalgia,” Hammes says. “Every piece is unique and individual. You don’t have to worry about seeing anybody else on the street wearing the same thing.”
The clothes Hammes sells at Singlestitch are of high quality, will last longer and have “sentimental meaning and history behind” them, he says, as opposed to much of the new clothing being made today.
Hamnes, who always had an affinity for fashion, was a frequent thrifter in high school. Post-graduation, his friends would raid his closet. He progressed to holding pop-up sales in his driveway. That’s when he realized that the effort he was putting into seeking out unique clothing items could become a business. He started buying items “in different sizes, not necessarily stuff that I only like myself, something that other people would like as well.”
He was making more money at his weekend pop-up shops than he was at his full-time job, so he quit and went from thrifting three days a week to six. Later, he ran out of room in his house to keep his inventory and moved into the storefront in La Crosse.
“Mostly I got sick of having to set up a bunch of stuff every weekend and then have to tear it down at night and then set it up the next day,” Hammes says. “I had no place to put everything.”
Once things are up and running in Madison, Hammes says he’ll reopen in a new location in La Crosse, probably in spring 2022.
Customers can bring in their old clothes and trade them for other garments or for cash. He generally looks for pieces from the ’90s or before, “whatever catches my eye,” Hammes says. “I've been doing it for a long enough time now, so I kind of know what sells and what doesn't sell.”
Singlestitch (@single_stitchmadison on Instagram) will be open every day for the first several weeks of the UW-Madison semester; eventually regular hours will be noon-8 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday.
