[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, and for this segment we are taking your calls about vintage clothes, buying them, wearing them, and loving them. We're talking about pre-loved clothing this hour because this weekend you can catch the Manhattan Vintage Show at Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street, which opened less than an hour ago. More than 80 vendors worth of racks and tables filled with clothes and other trappings of yesteryear.

The word vintage means that we're looking backward. One of the special things about vintage clothes is that they have a story even if we don't know exactly what it is, something that's new to you once had a life and a history with someone else somewhere else. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Call in and tell us about your favorite vintage or thrifted or pre-loved garments, shops, and styles.

Our number is 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. Phone lines are open. Tell us how you feel when you put on those 60s bellbottoms with 70 stripe prints or those 80s bombers jackets. Maybe you want to shout out your favorite place to shop for vintage or go thrifting, 212-433-9692, 212-433 WNYC, or maybe you just want to tell us why you love vintage clothing, or why you love vintage shopping. 212-433-9692. Social media is @AllOfIt WNYC. Joining us now to help take calls. Please welcome Amy Abrams, owner of Manhattan Vintage who joined us back in October for their fall vintage show. Now we're going to be talking about winter vintage. Amy, thanks for being with us.

Amy Abrams: Thank you so much for having me back.

Alison Stewart: I know the doors just opened about 30 minutes ago. Can you give us a quick status report? The update, what's going on?

Amy Abrams: It is a big party in there right now. There is quite a rush and people have armloads of things that they're trying on. There are a lot of big smiles, great outfits, and tremendous energy. Not to mention incredible vintage.

Alison Stewart: From being around vintage clothing as much as you are, would you speak a little bit to how clothes are made differently or how they were made differently then as opposed to today?

Amy Abrams: Yes, it's such a great question. I think the fact that you can find clothes from the past today tells you about the quality and how they were made. I think that was tremendous artistry. I think there was a lot of pride and craft personship in the way that things were made. I think that fabrics that were used in the past were more sustainable. There are lots of silks and cottons and wolves, and so you see pieces that really have lasted for a long time and have clearly been loved by another, but were cared for and are ready and available to be loved by someone new.

Alison Stewart: What advice would you give to someone who is feeling a little intimidated about sizing, because sizing is such a weird issue these days.

Amy Abrams: I think sizing is always a weird issue and I love to give people advice. I think that one thing that is very safe for some people who are maybe in between sizes or they know that they fluctuate for sizes. I say go for accessories. Accessories are the best. If it's an amazing piece of jewelry, you can wear it all the time. It could be a belt that you can wear if you fluctuate in sizes. I also am a big fan of coats. I think coats are really something that can be a tremendous statement piece. Oversized coats are very popular and there are a ton of oversized coats here. They do tend to fit a variety of styles and figures and just the trends and the styles that people like to express themselves in.

Alison Stewart: The phone lines are full. Let's take a couple of calls. Let's go to Graham calling in, I believe from Inwood. Hi Graham, thanks for calling All Of It.

Graham: Hey, yes, thank you very much for having me. Love the show. I was at drama school a million years ago and made a friend, and when we graduated she gave me the parade jacket of her grandfather from the 1940s Columbian military. She said she wanted to give it to me because I was the only person she'd ever met who would fit in it. I love it. It's gorgeous. It's blue, it's got [unintelligible 00:04:17]. It's completely ridiculous in a very powerful way. Because of it I've had to fight staying the same size and weight for decades now. It's a love-hate relationship.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Graham, thank you for calling in. Phil is calling us from Williamsburg. Hi Phil. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Phil: Hi Alison. All right. Well, got to start off by saying that I'm a self-diagnosed womanizer wool aficionado. I found my piece to resist donts at a Chicago thrift store in the early 90s. I walked in and I saw this beautiful gold coat and I tried it on and it fit like a glove. The elderly shop woman said, "Listen, you should buy that coat." I said, "Why?" She said, "Because it's a hundred percent vicuna." I said, "Yes, I saw that on the inside label." I said, "What is that?" Because it was early on in my wool indoctrination.

She said, "Oh listen." She goes, "There was a huge scandal over vicuna coats in the Senate in the 1950s." She goes, "Study your history books." I went and looked it up and it turned out that vicuna, you couldn't get in the United States. You had to get it from Rome or from Paris, because it had to do with the way that they got the wool from the Vicunas. In the end, what these lobbyists were doing is they were bribing US senators with vicuna coats. That is it. It's the most expensive coat you can have. It's like triple the price of cashmere and I have my vicuna coat.

Alison Stewart: What a find and what a story and a history lesson. Phil from Williamsburg, thank you so much. A womanizer, oh, he gets points just for that and then gave us a story too. It's such an interesting call. There are so many layers to that. That idea of we can learn about our culture from clothing, we can learn a little bit of history. You can figure out when something's like a really good find. What is another example of something that's a really, really good find, Amy? He mentioned a vicuna coat. Something else that's in that level of like, if you see it, get it.

Amy Abrams: Well, it's a funny question, Alison. I do think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find that sometimes there have been people who have told me that they've bought things that they-- maybe it was a piece of jewelry or they bought like a necktie and they didn't really know how valuable it was. Sometimes people realize they feel that it becomes more valuable by knowing how valuable it is. Sometimes they like it just as much because they had good taste and they had the foresight to see that it was something very special. I really do think that there's so much history in each piece and that you give a lot of meaning to it just by recognizing it and giving it new life.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Amy Abrams, she's the owner of Manhattan Vintage. The Manhattan Vintages vintage show is going on right now and through tomorrow by the way. I just wanted to clarify terms because there's vintage and then there's thrifting. I had an experience where I went to what used to be a thrift store, which has now become a vintage store. It was more about my expectation of going in anything like, I've got 25 bucks, I'm going to find something great. Everything was spendy, and beautiful but spendy. Can we talk a little bit about this difference between vintage and thrifting with no judgment on either?

Amy Abrams: Absolutely. There shouldn't be any judgment because they're both so much fun. I think that vintage often is usually thought of something that someone has vetted for you. Someone has really scavenged and searched far and wide and really found pieces that then maybe they clean and they style. That generally falls into the vintage category. Thrift generally seems to conjure up the image of being in more of like a larger warehouse environment where maybe there's a lot that you have to pick through in all different types of qualities that's available. That's often why in those types of setting things are a lot less expensive, but there are treasures to be found when you thrift as well.

Alison Stewart: Absolutely. I think to your point, vintage tends to be a little more curated.

Amy Abrams: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Thrift is like, you just go for it yourself.

Amy Abrams: Absolutely. Also, it is all fun and again, at the end of the day there's scarcity around certain items that people find then people can value them all over place in terms of what they think it's worth.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some more calls. Kim is calling actually from Saugerties. Hi Kim, thanks for calling in.

Kim: Hi. I love your show first of all, thank you for taking my call. I actually know Amy, I did the upstate vintage antique show with her up in upstate New York in Hudson Valley. Hi Amy.

Amy Abrams: Hi.

Kim: Hi, I have a business of my own it's called Chambers Vintage up in Saugerties Dubai appointment studio black-owned studio. Come by throughout here, same with promotion. I've been shopping vintage since I was a teenager probably. I think for me part of the love is like the thrill of the search and the hunt for something amazing. There are racks and racks of stuff at a thrift store or the back of an antique shop and you find the most incredible thing from the middle of the last century. It's like no one knows it's there and it just feels like you're finding a little piece of gold. I also just agree with-- someone made a point earlier about the better quality of materials and also the construction of the pieces, and how they hold up over time versus fast fashion where you definitely do not get that.

Alison Stewart: Kim, thanks for calling in. Sarah calling from Westchester has a really interesting story because she has been up close and personal with vintage clothing in a very interesting way, Sarah, tell us your story.

Sarah: I was fortunate enough to be an extra on the Marvelous Mrs Maisel and they close all of their extras in as much vintage clothing as they can. All the way down to the undergarments are vintage. It makes you realize just how wonderful the clothing was back in the '50s and '60s. Just your normal everyday outfit compared to modern clothes today. It's like you're dressing up just to go to the supermarket.

I've always been a fan of vintage clothing, even when I was in college, I would go vintage clothes shopping, but being on the show and being that up close and and seeing the racks of clothing, they have a whole warehouse full of just beautiful pieces of clothing. Like I said, from the undergarments to the accessories, it just blows your mind away and if there's nothing better than vintage.

Alison Stewart: Sarah, thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Vanessa on line three, calling in from the Upper West Side. Hi Vanessa.

Vanessa: Hey Alison, it's Vanessa. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me on the show today. My connection to Vintage was, oh God, beginning when I was in seventh grade and being introduced to it by my aunt going to thrift shops to my passion and developing a business from it. Up in Buffalo, New York, actually, there's a shop called Second Chic. I was a part of the development of it when it opened in 2009. When we first started that shop was known for being like an archive of what was so beautiful and what was really shared in terms of the type of buying that was happening in the '50s and '60s.

Unfortunately due to that time, the people that were passing away were at their height of what was popular at that time and being in Buffalo, furs were everything. We had an incredible assortment of all different types of fur.

We had everything from shark to gorilla and unfortunately those pieces were just shown due to regulations we unfortunately couldn't sell them. Ivory, it's illegal to sell, but the entire shop was really known, I think as the renaissance of Curated Vintage in Buffalo on a whole different level, but it was an incredible experience.

Alison Stewart: Vanessa, thank you for calling in. That's an interesting point Vanessa brings up that what was in style, not just style in terms of fashion. Things like fur and various fabrications might not be as welcomed by some people now. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but how do you think about those things? How do you think about things that may have been acceptable 50 years ago but not today?

Amy Abrams: I'll talk about fur because I think that fur is a pretty interesting topic because I think that it is actually sustainable if you buy vintage fur. It's something that exists already. It was made probably very well, and it's very warm and I would argue that that is a much more sustainable, thoughtful and environmental purchase than purchasing something synthetic that's fast fashion. I think it's definitely something that people have pretty strong opinions about.

I would think that that's probably the biggest category that people have feelings about, but also people have feelings about buying vintage diamonds. There's a lot of different types of topics and I think you have to just make a decision about you support something with the intention of sustainability, of an intention of taking something that exists already and giving it new life. I think that, in my opinion, that supersedes all.

Alison Stewart: My guess is Amy Abrams, owner of Manhattan Vintage. It is Manhattan Vintages Winter Show going on on 18th Street at that beautiful pavilion. You are my guest as well. 212-433-969, 221-2433 WNYC. If you want to shout out your favorite vintage fine, maybe your favorite vintage store, what it is you like about vintage. Amy, I know you are a big believer in tailoring. When you think about tailoring, when you get a piece of clothing, you see it. How do you know, this is worth taking to the tailor. I don't have to rebuild this entire jacket. Is there some guidelines you can give people about, yes, it's worth it to buy this and then spend 40 bucks on tailoring?

Amy Abrams: Absolutely. I think a good tailor should be like one of your lifeline conversations.

Alison Stewart: Speed dial.

Amy Abrams: Exactly. We have partnered with Alter New who's at all of our shows. On site you have the ability to have someone give you their advice. Is it worth it, because I think it's a great question you raise because sometimes someone who is maybe less familiar could buy something that could end up costing them hundreds of dollars to tailor. I think in general, when you're at the beginning of the process, jeans, they can always be hand, that's easy. Sleeves, they can always be made shorter, dresses as well. I think once you go into things that have more construction, if it's a dress, it has a lot of boning, you're going to go into a pricier type of purchase and I also think it's about fabrics.

Natural fabrics, wool, cotton, silk, linen, they're easy definitely to tailor. I think when you go into things that are more like tool or ganza to go to things that are going to or layers of chiffon, those are things that become more complicated. They may be worth it, but you just have to realize how much am I willing to spend, but ultimately I'm going to say this, I think if you really love it and it's so special and you've never seen anything to and it speaks to your heart, I say go for it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Marie from the Upper West Side. Hi Marie.

Marie: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Go for it. You're on the air.

Marie: How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm great. Want to hear your story.

Marie: Sure. Several years ago, I can't even remember when or where I found this vintage dress from about 1915. It was black, it had chiffon sleeves and it was perfect for the era of when Phantom of the Opera was set and a friend of mine got tickets for Phantom of the Opera and I wore this dress and I got compliments galore. People asking me, where did you find this and so forth and so on. I still have it somewhere buried in my closet, but it was such an experience of being there and really feeling like I was living in the time period because I was dressed for it.

Alison Stewart: Awesome. Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Anna from Jersey City. Hi Anna.

Anna: Hey, how are you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing great. You're on the air.

Anna: Great. Thanks for having me. Real quick. I run a little shop with my partner. It's called Lady Beret, and something that I just wanted to talk about is a lot of people in the plus size community often feels very left out by the vintage community and it's a sore topic. I just felt that was really important to note that there are many reasons why it's harder to find plus size vintage, and it's not that women haven't always existed in all shapes and sizes.

I just think it's really important for people to know, for example, some of the most beautiful dresses you find that seem virtually untouched, they belong to teenagers that wore them once and put them in the back of the closet. Stuff like that, I just think that it should be talked about more because I think that vintage needs to be more inclusive.

Alison Stewart: Anna, thank you for calling in. Let's go to Marcus on line nine who has an interesting question. Amy, I'm not sure you're going to be able to answer it, but I think it's good to raise. Hi Marcus. Thanks for calling in.

Marcus: Hi, long longtime listener. First time caller. Thanks for having me. I had a question with just with regards to the different regulatory standards that existed back in the day with regards to maybe toxins and dyes and stuff like that. I wondered if you had any advice on how to make healthy choices while also embracing a vintage lifestyle?

Alison Stewart: Such an interesting question, Amy.

Amy Abrams: That is an interesting question. I'm going to go back to sticking with natural fibers because they tend to not have chemicals, or if you wanted to do accessories, I go with metals that you can actually get tested, whether it's silver or gold. I think that there tend to be more chemical use in more modern clothing because things used to be made more one of a kind in the past and I think that what was most accessible was a lot of natural fabrics and fibers.

Alison Stewart: Stick with the natural fibers.

Amy Abrams: Yes, for sure.

Alison Stewart: When you were on the show last time, you talked about making vintage clothing accessible, that was a really important idea and one of our callers just made the point about for larger sized bodies sometimes it's hard to find good vintage. What does it look like in practice to make the show and to make vintage clothing more accessible?

Amy Abrams: Making vintage clothing more accessible is to me having array of everything. That means an array of price points, that means an array of styles, that means an array of eras, that means an array of sizes. We do our very best at each show to really curate dealers who really can represent just the widest showcase of everything and anything that's Vintage. You never can achieve that 100%. We're always trying to improve upon that. It's a very exciting challenge, but really to have so many entry points, whether you're vintage curious and it's your first time or you're a vintage collector and you know what you love. We really just try and really hope that you have an experience where you find just this massive variety in terms of price point, taste, style and era, and everything and sizing. I hope that if your listeners come to the show that they experienced that.

Alison Stewart: Gamei said, I started shopping vintage when I was in college and wanted to develop my own personal style but didn't have the money to shop brand new. I quickly realized the quality was better and the clothes felt more timeless. Now I always keep thrifted items in my repertoire. Let's see if we can get Jim. Jim, got a little bit of time for you, calling from Harlem.

Jim: Hey. Hey, Alison. Hi. It's Jim Bay. By the way, [unintelligible 00:21:02] the case study. I found a vintage vest. I used to work for the sample sales at Parsons. The vest is made out of wool. It's dark blue and has gold piping around the edges with eyelids. It's so very, I don't know, it's modern but it's vintage. It is vintage but it looks so like 1940s.

Alison Stewart: Love it. Jim Bay, thank you for calling in. My last question to you in our last minute, Amy, when you go thrifting, is it, I can take home whatever I like or do you go in with a target like, I'm getting a suit, I'm looking for a sweater. What's your MO?

Amy Abrams: Alison, I've been wearing and collecting vintage since I was 16. There's nothing that I need at this point. [laughs] I have found that actually when I have something in mind, I'm never successful. I find that when I just go and I look around, something catches my eye. It could be a color, it could be a texture, it could just be the shape of something and that's usually why I really tell people and encourage people really buy what you love. It shows your own self-expression because you'll find it.

Alison Stewart: You will find it.

Amy Abrams: You'll find it.

Alison Stewart: The Manhattan Vintage Show is today and tomorrow. You can check out its website. Amy Abrams, thanks for taking our listeners' calls. Have a great show.

Amy Abrams: Thanks so much, Alison.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.