So you want to shop vintage but don't know where to start? Let me share with you the places I recommend to find some great pieces...
Seen as the biggest vintage kilo sale company in the UK, Preloved travel up and down the country popping up at different cities with lots and I mean lots of vintage garments.
The premise is that you are given a clear plastic bag (biodegradable) and you rummage along many rails of garments, generally from the 80s through to the early 2000s. There's a mixture of male and female garments. There are jumpers, skirts, denim, dresses, coats, trainers, handbags, scarves and more. Their events are popular, so if you see something you like I would say get it before someone else snaps it up! They have pop up dressing cubicles and mirrors so you can try before you buy as you never know how vintage will fit and there is a no returns policy.
This is also great if you want to buy to sell on. For example if you want to sell on Depop or eBay. Preloved come with many items, so they are regularly refilling the rails up with even more stock throughout the event.
They are also one of the few vintage kilo sellers that handpick each item. They grade each item they ship in (and they ship in huge bundles into their warehouse) and some are sold to private sellers, some to retail stores, some recycled and the rest in kilo sales.
Once you've selected your garments, you put them in your plastic bag and take it up to the pay points to purchase. They have weighing scales by the dressing cubicles so you can also check how much your bag will cost. The coats are generally capped at £15 per item (which should work out cheaper than paying for how much it actually weighs). Handbags are capped at £10. Everything else is £15 per kilo. It is easy to get carried away, so my advice is to weigh as you go!
Much the same as the Preloved Kilo sale. The premise is pretty much the same. It's £15 per kilo and they have similar types of items. There isn't much difference in the two kilo sellers. I would say that when I went to my first Worth the Weight kilo sale I saw more variety of stock, such as more desirable brands, more footwear, and handbags (I went through a phase of buying lots of secondhand handbags). That said either one, if not both, are worthy of going to.
Vintage Vera is a kilo sale I've only just discovered over the last couple of months. This one tends to pop up at Student Unions. Not as big in quantity of stock as Preloved and Worth the Weight, but I have found some really great pieces at Vera's. Including a wool cream Max Mara coat and a cat print lined dress. Still one to check out none the less.
This one is based in Worthing in Sussex and once a month for two days they open up their warehouse (which isn't huge but full of lots of vintage clothing). They again charge £15 per kilo and they have some 70s and the occasional 60s items too. It's worth noting that the above three kilo sellers take cash and cards as payment, TBWA only take cash payments, so come prepared with your cash!
They also have a couple of shops in the Laines in Brighton. They tend to be more marked up, but they do every so often hold sales so you can get a bargain if you're a savvy shopper.
One of the most popular secondhand fashion online apps. I've been selling on Depop on and off for 3 years now and I find it a super-easy way to sell second hand. It's most popular with the under 24 years old age group for selling preloved clothing and accessories. It is a pretty saturated market but like any business but if you want to sell on Depop, market your products well and give great customer service you'll get the sales.
The upside is the ease of selling on the app, it's really user friendly. The downside is the often asked questions from potential buyers to sell the item for much, much less than you are listing it for. It does get frustrating that people think it's ok to sell something for so little, making me minimal profit, but you don't ask, you don't get as they say.
I have also brought from Depop too. Most of my purchases I have got from Depop have been good experiences. My advice is to check the seller's ratings. I have over 65 reviews for my Depop shop and all of them are 5* ratings.
Depop does take a 10% cut off your sale and you have to use Paypal to sell through to. Paypal also takes a small cut so take that into account too. I send through Royal Mail and it's not the cheapest so it does make sense to consider your pricing strategy to maximize profitability.
I don't think I need to explain eBay. Hopefully you are familiar with how this online market place works. I haven't sold on eBay as I have been using Depop, but I have brought vintage clothing from eBay. I find that the sellers on eBay are more dedicated to the customer experience (no shade on the youngsters) and I get a better buyer experience on eBay than on Depop. My opinion anyway.
I find there is far more vintage clothing on eBay than on Depop for example. Depop is more high street fashion and vintage fashion through to the 90s. On eBay, I have brought items from the 60s and 70s, which isn't always easy to find elsewhere.
This is a great place to find independent brands and more one-off fashion pieces. I like the fact that these items are not mass-produced and the sellers are really dedicated to customer experience. Not just anyone can get on here, so you can rest assured that these are highly regarded micro businesses. I do like to support small businesses (as I did run my own pop-up vintage shop last summer) so I had a small taste of how hard it is to get sales as a small business.
There are online sites that sell vintage too and these are the ones I recommend you check out...
A well-known charity supporting third world countries. They have a great online shop with new and vintage fashion. They have a dedicated vintage fashion section on their website. Their prices aren't as affordable as kilo sales for example, but I get peace of mind that I'm helping a good cause.
Rokit has both physical shops and is online too. They stock vintage clothing from the across many decades and it's always fun having a look at their new stock.
They also have a shop in Shoreditch, which I visited a year ago. I found a few high-end handbags in their shop. One, in particular, was a Chanel handbag. It was marked at around £40 and it looked pretty much like the real deal. So for that price I snapped it up. I later found out it was not real (buy doing a lot of online research), hence the low price I purchased it for. But to the untrained eye it looked authentic. I later sold it on for a profit (clearly stating it was potentially not genuine). So all was not lost. (Rokit didn't claim it was real or not so no shade on them- I think the £40 price tag was the giveaway!).
Their prices are retail prices (so like other retail brands) so not as affordable as a kilo sale, but you can still find some great vintage pieces.
A vintage retail store and online shop, not too dissimilar to Rokit in product and pricing. I like Beyond Retro for the fact they have vintage clothing and they also have upcycled vintage clothing. They take a jersey hoodie for example and they crop it to make it more current. They do also hold occasionally what they call Garage Sales, where they sell off a lot of their stock at lower price points. They also do this on their website too.
I love going into their shops, as it's an Aladdin's cave of vintage clothing. I love a good rummage!
This is another awesome vintage shop. I also visited this when I was in London last year. I love that a lot of these vintage shops have similar style products but they create their own identity in their shops. Atika in Shoreditch is a pretty decent size shop with lots of vintage clothing. Again the prices are similar to Beyond Retro and Rokit.
Charity shops
I find that it's hit and miss shopping for vintage clothing in charity shops. Some charity shops have dedicated shops or sections in their shops for this. My local charity shops save their vintage clothing for the lead up to Goodwood Revival. Then I can find vintage clothing, but they then put a premium on the price. This is great for the charity, but it's not always the most affordable way to shop vintage fashion. From my experience anyway.
But sometimes you can find a bargain of an item in a charity shop, so it's worth checking out when they refresh their stock and getting in their early to beat those other savvy shoppers to it!
I'm sure there are many other ways to shop for vintage fashion. Please do share where you love to shop vintage.
Thank you so much for reading. Until next time,
Abbie xx
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