The Price of My Vintage Obsessions

9th Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan is notorious for its vintage shopping. Curated and uncurated, expensive and not expensive. My favorite boutique is fittingly called 9th Street Vintage and I remember the first time I walked in. It was 2019 and I had just discovered the joys of archived clothing. Within the first six steps I took, I spotted a rack packed with vintage nightgowns. As my hand grazed the delicate fabric, I was scared that just one wrong move would tear it. I was about twenty miles deep into my fantasy, and then I saw the price tag. Three hundred. This was my first interaction with these beautiful things, so I assumed that every nightgown from the 30s was priced that high. Even though my adoration for vintage nightgowns grew by the day, I was reduced to desperately admiring them from afar. 

Months turned into years of what felt like my unrequited love for these delicate little slips until I reached the summer after my senior year of high school. I was shopping at a vintage pop-up in Montauk, put on by a sunkissed girl my age (side note: I was ridden with jealousy that this girl wasn’t about to start her first year of college, but rather galavanting around the country visiting warehouses filled with vintage goodies to buy and sell). And then it struck me again. It was as if a scent had wafted into my nostrils and put me under a spell. The spell of a gorgeous 1930s slip dress tinted pale green, with tiny little sleeves that flapped in the breeze. Cut on the bias, it clung to my body at all the right spots. It was so light, so breathable, so effortless. I hadn’t even bought the dress yet and I was already defending it to my friends that came with me. My rationale was that I could wear it to an upcoming wedding. So, with my eyes pinched shut and my arm outstretched with my trembling, sad, little debit card, I dropped $375 on it. While I had earned this money earlier in the summer, I still had a pit in my stomach. Luckily, it was nothing my dopamine rush couldn’t subdue. I walked out with a wide grin smeared across my face, the slight ping of buyer's remorse trying to climb to the forefront of my brain. I called my mother and she nearly slapped me through the phone when I told her how much money I spent. She told me I was insane to buy a vintage slip dress for that much when I could find one just like it for $40 at a flea market. Being the teen that I was, I cast her off, told her she didn’t understand, and this was from the THIRTIES. But, like all good motherly advice, it set up camp in the back of my head. 

Me at said wedding with my gorgeous brother, Jesse.

A few months later the day of the wedding came. It nearly took me ten minutes to slip on my dress due to how fragile it was. But when the end seam fell to my ankles and the sleeves nestled on my shoulders, my worries melted away. It was the perfect amount of sheer–even though this was a wedding, the potential shock from my cousins was too delicious to pass up. And they delivered. While chatting with my cousin Molly over a cocktail after the ceremony, she said to me through a rigid smile, “What a funky dress! I could never wear that!” That was all I needed to hear. I danced all night and when I got home from the wedding, my dress had torn in three places. My fantasy was ruptured and I began to worry. 

Halfway through freshman year of college, I wandered about the flea market outside my house. It had been there ever since I was a baby, and the TikTok crazies were on the brink of destroying it. I found this little tent with vintage sleepwear galore, all under $40. My mother was right, as she always is. Here were the incredible gowns that she had promised. The next thing I knew, I was at a flea market in LA and found another fairly priced seller. A newly enlightened shopper, I went on and on about how great her prices were, how you couldn’t find them in New York, and how she could be charging so much more and dummies would buy them (dummies like me). 

 I still have the satisfying memory of Molly’s face and my sweaty dancing in that dress from the wedding, but the dress just couldn’t handle the heat. I frequently go back and forth in my head if it was worth spending my hard-earned money just to tear the dress. I was able to repair it but maybe nightgowns from the 30s are just meant to be admired. Where does our generation’s need to shop curated vintage come from? The reasons I have heard include their one-of-a-kind-ness, their sustainability benefits, and so on. I suspect it is because it is trendy. Thirty-year-old women in Williamsburg take advantage of our TikTok-ridden brains and jack up the prices of clothing that should be half the price. And yet, I still can’t help but feel their magnetic pull. There is something special about wearing something from a different time in a whole new context. However, it is not fun when wearing it ruins it, but not wearing it feels like when people cover their sofas in plastic. Clothing is one of our last tangible collections, so perhaps it is okay to buy vintage clothing, like nightgowns, that can’t be worn out dancing. Articles of clothing can serve as relics and some people, like me I am discovering, can be satisfied with just that. Maybe just don’t spend $375.