Good eye!

Curated vintage is more than thrifting. Madison shop owners with a knack for novelty do the picking and choosing first.

Rob Mackesey is rarely off the clock. After his State Street storefront Vintage on State, 132 State St., closes and he has some downtime, he is online — searching for unique Wisconsin-themed vintage items to add to his inventory.

Earlier this year, during one of Mackesey’s after-hours scrolls, he came across a satin, button-up Badgers football jacket going for $500. At a glance, he acknowledged it was interesting, vintage…and far too expensive to purchase and resell at his store. So he passed it over.

But something about the jacket was oddly familiar. Tooling it over in his mind the next day, Mackesey realized he had seen the jacket before. It was in the closet of a “big Madison collector,” who told him it was a team-issued jacket from the 1980s, given to Wisconsin Badgers football players and staff with a one-of-one nameplate label “that looks like it was sewn on by a grandma.”

“I went back to the listing, and it was the same jacket!” Mackesey says. “I clicked through the pictures, and on the inside, ‘Dave McClain’ was written on the nameplate.”

Yes, that Dave McClain — famed Badgers football head coach from ’78-’85, UW-Madison Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, and namesake of the McClain Athletic Facility that sits below Camp Randall. Mackesey messaged the seller and splurged on it.

“I’m not selling it,” Mackesey says with a laugh. “But it’s a prominent store display piece if anybody wants to see it.

“It was so cool to bring a piece like that back to Madison,” he continues. “And it’s fun to bounce these stories off people in the store who connect with the Badgers community as I do.”

Vintage on State is one of a number of vintage stores that have popped up in Madison over the last decade. They are different from thrift stores and consignment shops in that the offerings are carefully curated by their owners; some specialize in logo T-shirts, the more local the better; others zero in on particular decades. Some change their emphasis regularly. What is a common denominator is the desire to be uncommon.

Stand out in the crowd

Consumer interest in vintage is fueled by people who want to stand out in a world of mass-produced fashion, says Mitch Hammes, owner of Singlestitch, 214 State St.

“If you go into Urban Outfitters, you’re buying the same shirt that 20 other people in Madison have,” says Hammes. “When you go into a vintage store, you are guaranteed to leave with things that are individual.” Vintage pieces have rare details, designs, cuts, logos and colors that are unconventional and outside of today’s mainstream.

Alex Gerald, a rising junior at UW-Madison, has been buying vintage since he was a sophomore in high school. He says he spots more people wearing vintage than he did just five years ago, crediting the rise to social media. Rappers and celebrities have made it fashionable and “everyone is seeing that online,” he adds.

But for him, vintage being trendy isn’t a reason to write it off — he enjoys that it connects him to others: “I see somebody on the street wearing a cool outfit and an obviously vintage shirt, I automatically know I could be friends with that person. It’s a mutual interest.”

For Gerald, it’s all about “the age.”

“I like my clothes to be older than me. I’m big into old music and pop culture references from the ’80s and ’90s.”

Beverly Gordon, professor emerita from the UW-Madison’s School of Human Ecology, spent a career studying material culture (that is, the meaning that objects have in our lives), concentrating on textiles and fashion. Gordon notes that vintage clothes “have some context, which is really different” from current mass-produced fast fashion.

Interest in vintage has also been sparked by concerns over the present day’s fashion industry’s contributions to pollution, global warming and labor exploitation. Issues range from the shipping of garments long distances to toxic dyes to the large quantity of discarded clothing ending up in landfills. For the climate-conscious, buying second-hand is a way to mitigate, or at least partially reduce, negative impacts on our planet. 

But in a fun way. There is something thrilling about what Gordon calls the hunt: “It’s a different type of shopping because you don’t know what you’re going to see. Younger people don’t just want stuff, they want experiences, and so vintage shopping makes great sense.”

The Bounty, 1041 S. Park St., pushes the art and entertainment value of shopping vintage even further, collaborating with rotating “artists in residence” and hosting events like bands — and even a fish boil.

How old is “old”?

But what exactly is “vintage”? And what experience can shoppers expect at a vintage store versus a thrift or consignment shop?

In the fashion world, garments 20 years or older are classified as vintage, so anything made in 2006 or earlier qualifies as vintage today. However, as vintage shopping has grown in popularity, the term has become more fluid. Not every item hanging on the racks of Madison’s vintage stores predates 2006; some shop owners embrace a broader definition. Still, great pieces share a few defining qualities: they are interesting, in good condition, and hard to find.

Often vintage store owners curate around a theme, style or era. Vintage on State, for example, specializes in vintage Wisconsin items — mostly Badgers gear, but Packers and Brewers items are sprinkled in too.

Hammes, of Singlestitch, curates around unique items he would wear himself. “I wear nostalgic clothes,” he says. “I wear Western stuff. Sometimes I wear what could be classified as goth. I like to mix it up, and so do customers.” Hammes says a majority of Singlestitch’s inventory is graphic tees because “they express who you are. When you meet somebody wearing a unique vintage tee, you get an idea of who they are and what they are interested in.”

Mackesey, of Vintage on State, finds his goods by searching on websites like eBay and Depop. Hammes and his wife visit flea markets and vintage fests to source items, but they also buy from individuals and wholesalers across the Midwest who score finds at thrift stores.

Because curation takes time, money and vision, items at vintage shops cost more than items found in thrift stores like Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul. Thrift stores also typically rely on donations — not curation — for inventory, so they offer a less cohesive collection, mixing a variety of brands, conditions and styles.

Consignment shops are also less cohesive, selling items for people who bring them in, for a cut of the sale price. Upshift Swap Shop, 836 E. Johnson St., falls somewhere in between. Its model asks customers to pay $20 to bring in a bag of clothes, then refill it with store items.

UW’s Gordon notes that these days even some thrift stores are in the curation business: “Even at Goodwill, they’ve gotten very smart about having their own [in-store] boutique. And they have people who know what they’re looking at, too.” High-interest items will go into a more curated area or boutique section, she adds, “which is more expensive.”

Is cherry-picking ethical?

Gianofer Fields is an art historian who focuses on material culture and object studies; her focus is textiles. She’s also an honorary fellow at the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture at UW-Madison. Fields has reservations about people who cherry-pick items from thrift stores, especially hard-to-find plus-size garments, and resell them to more affluent customers via social media. She worries about low-income customers losing access to an affordable wardrobe. “How does it affect the community [members] who need those garments for daily wear? Sizes 18 and up are hard to find in thrift stores.” She’s also concerned about those who need a suit or good dress for a job or job interview.

On the other hand, Fields sees value in shops that save “clothes that are true ’50s and ’60s and ’70s — that’s a whole different discussion.” Having a middle man preserve these garments “makes perfect sense…it’s a whole different skill set. Some [garments] you can’t even wash, you have to spray them with vodka.” In these cases, Fields credits the vintage shops that help “people who may want to wear these clothes, but not have the time to claw through a thrift store all day.”

And if they’re saving a garment from the 1940s or ’50s or ’60s from the landfill or ending up in a bale of clothes heading overseas, she says, “go for it.”

– Written by Lauren Hafeman. Linda Falkenstein contributed reporting to this story.

Some area vintage stores, including Vintage on State, Good Style Shop, Kool Things Vintage, Singlestitch, PureFormArchives and Happy Hours, are participating in the Secondhand Summer Passport, a promotion that offers 10% off and a chance for patrons who collect stamps from all 16 shops to win gift cards. The passport promotion expires on Sept. 1.

A selection of favorite vintage shops

Happy Hours

223 E. Mifflin St. • $16-$200 • Red cowboy boots, funky sunglasses, jewelry and clothing

Happy Hours owner Ali Gilbertson grew up in a family of artists and “Dumpster divers,” as she puts it. “Everything was secondhand, before it was trendy.” She worked at Cure, a vintage shop in New York City’s East Village, for nine years. When she moved to Madison in 2018, she was looking for a way to turn her collecting habit and “outside-the-box creativity into something that I could sell.” Happy Hours is open limited hours, on the cozy first floor of an old house, with her sole “employee” her dog, Redford.

Gilbertson sources her goods from out of town, preferably outside of Wisconsin. “I get out when I can on a road trip,” she says, and will scout thrift stores on the way looking for items from “true vintage stuff” to “new with tags on it.” Most of what’s on the racks right now “is heavy ‘90s and Y2K because that’s definitely what’s popular,” she says. The early 2000s, too, is on the upswing.

“I grab what I like,” says Gilbertson. “There has to be something redeeming about it to me personally.”

With her many years in retail and resale, she thinks she has “an eye for what’s going to look good on the rack or what’s going to sell. Really I’m going off vibes.” She does not differentiate clothes based on gender and also makes an effort to carry all sizes, from extra small to extended sizes. “I want to have something for everybody.”

Searching for items, cleaning, and identifying eras and labels, all take time. “Truthfully I try not to think about that. If I was keeping track of my hours, it would be too sad. But that’s the part I enjoy.”

Nonetheless, it’s a job. “Friends will be like, ‘Let’s go thrifting together sometime.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t want to go with me.’”

—Linda Falkenstein

Good Style Shop

817 East Johnson St. • $25-$45 • Mostly 1970s or earlier

For the last 15 years Peter Benck has been providing a source of “true vintage” clothing in Madison, offering a range of shirts, jeans, dresses, jackets and more dating to the 1970s and earlier. “I wanted Madison to have a resource for creatives to have an option for sustainable fashion,” he says.

As a teen, Benck’s love of music and the industry’s embrace of counterculture style helped spur his interest in fashion. “It became a calling,” he says, sitting among the racks in his store, which are arranged by color into rainbows.

Benck uses a rotation of six vendors, each with their own specialty, to refresh stock in the store each week. One, Rebecca Light, favors mid-century women’s wear for its interesting prints and fit-and-flare style. She looks for new items daily, searching flea markets and estate sales. Eventually collectors start selling, Light says, because, “otherwise you become a hoarder.”

Fashion is cyclical, but how an item is styled changes, she notes. A customer might now pair that 1950s dress with a pair of combat boots, for example. “Things come back, but for a new audience and in a new way,” says Light.

—Julia Richards

PureForm Archives

1969 Winnebago St. • $15-$120 • Classic workwear, designer labels, including a Versace button down shirt and 1940s English riding jacket

If you want a jacket, and want to know not only the brand and material, but the jacket’s history, Samuel Wallner’s your guy. Choices in Wallner’s vintage clothing store, PureForm Archives, might include an early Ralph Lauren peacoat, a 1930s hunting jacket, a World War II cadet’s jacket, a leather varsity jacket made in Hillsboro, Wisconsin, and a handmade Amish jacket. Wallner, who has been open in the tiny triangular space in Schenk’s Corners for a year, can tell you details about each.

He sources his inventory from Chicago estate sales, antique markets, trips to New York, and even a cousin in Europe who ships items to him. He looks for well made workwear and designer labels, including for tailored suits, to sell in his unisex store. Wallner’s mom would take him shopping at second-hand stores, and from an early age he noticed how older clothing was often of higher quality. Yes, the prices were lower, but the clothes were also better.

Wallner’s fascination with fashion is contagious and he has become friends with regular customers, who he stays in touch with on the store’s Discord or Instagram. “If I’m not playing a video game or listening to music, I’m online looking at fashion,” he says.

—Julia Richards

Kool Things

1310 Williamson St. • $10-$45 • Local Ts, daily wear

Like many vintage sellers, Joel O’Donnell was brought up shopping at thrift stores and garage sales. He got interested in old sportswear, and when he found something that wasn’t in his size sometimes he’d sell it to friends. This led to selling online, which he did for eight years before opening Kool Things. The store’s mix of T-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets and hats lean heavily toward local nostalgia with plenty of Badgers and Packers wear, as well as tees promoting Art Fair on the Square or charity fundraisers from 40 years ago.

Kool Things employee Nic Cruz goes thrifting regularly at stores around Madison, and checks yard and estate sales regularly for new inventory. He notes the store buys back items they have  sold when people are done wearing them, continuing the thrift cycle. The sustainability of avoiding fast fashion appeals to him, and he thinks, to many of their customers. “I’m very passionate about the environment,” says Cruz.

With a lower price point than many vintage stores, Kool Things focuses on daily essentials. “We just want to put clothes in closets,” says Cruz.

—Julia Richards

[Editor's note: This article was updated to correct that Peter Benck of Good Style Shop has been in business for 15 years.]