When Manhattan's Best Vintage is All in One Room
The Manhattan Vintage Show: where the vintage-lovers' go to play!
It’s the Manhattan Vintage Show — not the runways! — that tells me what’s cool in the fashion year ahead. I’m Emily Stochl, a vintage & secondhand fashion reporter 🎤 and this is Pre-Loved, an indie media platform with its finger on the pre-loved fashion pulse!
Heather Ramey found the same Mary B. Hetz beaded, black-and-white cat belt twice, and ever since then, she’s been searching for more. At the Manhattan Vintage Show last weekend, Ramey displayed two signed Hetz belts: a tropical fish and a red and purple parrot. Delightful!
Ramey owns Noble Vintage Clothier, and has been dealing at the Manhattan Vintage Show for nearly fifteen years. The Manhattan Vintage Show is a three-day seasonal market held at Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea where vintage-lovers flock to shop, style, and gab about pre-loved treasure. With 90+ vendors, the venue is packed with rare Edwardian robes, 1920s beaded clochette handbags, 1950s quilted dressing gowns, the coolest 1970s Westernwear, and enough Fendi baguettes to outfit Carrie Bradshaw for a series-run.
After a real cold snap, this sunny New York weekend had the shoppers out and about (lining the block on the sold-out Saturday!), ready to escape into a world of vintage for a few hours. Carla Rey, of Carla & Carla Vintage, told me: “it’s really just so good to be here, with friends and community.”
This nearly 24-year-old vintage show (its existence vintage itself!) is shopped by fashion industry professionals, including designers and stylists alike — I’ve bumped into team members from Ralph Lauren, Tory Burch and Anna Sui at shows past. And though the vintage-buying budgets are smaller than they once were at fashion houses, designers do still visit the hotspot to shop and score. Anna Sui, herself, is known to buy back her own archives, and her team has partnered with regular Manhattan Vintage Show dealer, Eveliina Vintage, to incorporate vintage into their runway collections and online store — harkening back to when vintage racks were a regular feature at the Anna Sui SoHo flagship, first opened in 1992.
The likes of Law Roach, Lynn Yeager and Stacy London have also been known to visit, and at last October’s Manhattan Vintage show, my friend, Larissa of Criteria Vintage, sold Law Roach a 1980s red and black fringe leather jacket!
Some vendors, like Lexie Butterfly Vintage specialize in the funky psychedelic vintage, including a rainbow-array of leather jackets and patterned, disco-collared blouses. Others, like Destiny’s Legendary Closet are a vintage designer dream — featuring rare pieces by Mugler, Moschino, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Gucci’s Tom Ford.
Sustainability was a focus for dealers, like Jac’s Gold Vintage who upcycles “wounded bird pieces” with visible damage, and repairs them (check out her one-of-a-kind patched Carhartt jackets); and Amanda at Collective Good Shop who gave new life to old garments, adding sustainably-sourced ostrich and marabou feathers to their cuffs, collars and trims. Such flair!
Dealers who read Pre-Loved mentioned visiting the recent Louis Vuitton x Murakami pop-up in SoHo to have their vintage Y2K-era bags repaired (they told me the SoHo care team there was great!) — and we agreed that offering repairs is such a great way to build customer-brand loyalty. We all form the deepest bonds with the pieces we’ve cared to repair!
Speaking of, the show’s on-site tailors, Alternew and Raw Meat & Repair Co., saved me this weekend, because I flew to chilly New York with one coat (thrifted for $15, very old, but oh-so warm!) and managed to rip where the sleeve meets the armpit. We’re talking a BIG rip — the kind where you hear happen, and you’re just like, shit! But when I realized I could get it fixed on-site, I just pulled my coat right out of coat-check (another major perk of this show!) and had it repaired while I shopped.
If you find big vintage markets an overwhelming environment to try-on clothing, know you can’t go wrong shopping accessories at this show. Classic Coco showed me the vintage micro-mini bags that were popular this season, our particular favorite being in Chanel’s one-of-a-kind ‘French navy’ blue. The dealers at Wearable Art helped me date and identify my brown suede Gucci bag — from the 1980s, I’ve never really known her story! — and I got lost in their collection of beaded Fendi baguette bags, too.
Eclectic Inventory Vintage offered a stunning collection of vintage watches (and watch-chokers, like mine!) plus all the boho chic mid-2000s Chloé bags your heart could desire; and — sharing a booth — Azyr Specs brought vintage eyeglasses spanning every era and style.
I bumped into friend-of-Pre-Loved,
, who found a darling drawstring bag that looks like it’s made of satin pink rose petals. And I completed my favorite kind of vintage mission: finding someone else the perfect piece! My friend, Emily McKay, who is a stylist, came to this show with one piece in mind: a soft black leather bag, large enough to fit a water bottle, but comfortable on the shoulder for a long day out-and-about in the city.And you know these kinds of vintage missions, right? Simple pieces, but always a challenge of perfectionism — particularly when you’re shopping with a stylist who (brilliantly!) knows what they like and want.
But when I tell you we triumphed! We thought we might get lucky when we found Eric’s Leather Collection, who specializes in high-quality leather handbags of the Coach, Dooney and Bourke, Frye and Marc Jacobs, etc. variety. It was there that McKay found her perfect staple bag, a vintage Longchamp. We also made a friend on a similar shopping mission, who found her own staple black leather bag by Coach.
Perhaps the best part — cooler, even, than the browsing and the street style — are moments like this. Seeing the vintage community bond together around people and spaces and treasure they love. This visit to vintage-wonderland took me out of ‘forever-January,’ and lofted me right across the finish line, into the arms of some much-needed, really-good vibes.
Thanks for reading! You can find me across the internet as @emilymstochl on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads! 💛 - Emily