‘Wearing a Piece of History’: Vintage Clothing Stores Find a Growing Market

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Manan Luthra, an intern with the Australia bureau.

Until recently, I had never realized how drab my wardrobe is. I do a bit of acting in my spare time and was booked for a project that required me to source my own outfit. I didn’t think too much about the request — low-budget films often ask actors to wear what they have — but the instruction to find something “bright, colorful and unbranded” was proving difficult.

Looking through my closet, I realized that most of my stuff was monochromatic, faded or emblazoned with a logo. I couldn’t find anything suitable that I liked in the stores near me. In an act of semi-desperation, I decided that what I needed wasn’t something new. It was something old.

And so I traveled to Newtown, a suburb of Sydney known for its quirky retail outlets and abundance of thrift shops, in search of vibrant, brand-free and vintage fashion.

In Newtown, there are too many clothing stores to count. The suburb’s main road is dominated by a plethora of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them vintage fashion outlets. Those outlets sell just about everything, from 1960s-era military jackets to spurred cowboy boots to dusty Mexican ponchos. Offbeat stores have been a part of Newtown’s cultural identity for decades, so I knew I could find the outfit I was looking for there.

Stepping into the first shop I saw, Fabrique Vintage, I was overwhelmed. The single-story space was small, but every conceivable surface had an item for sale. Customers are effectively boxed in by the colorful pants and T-shirts on each rack, the off-white shoes on the store’s floor, and the flamboyant jackets hanging on the walls.

I asked some of the other shoppers in Fabrique why vintage fashion appealed to them. Some said they were shopping for vintage because they liked learning about a garment’s history. Others liked that an item might be rare, or they appreciated nostalgia. Many simply said they liked older clothes “because they look good.”