Local Business Aims to Bring Back Vintage Clothing
Do you have old, out of style clothes or accessories that you don’t wear anymore? Why not give them a new home?
Image credit: Ryan Lepore for The Campus Trainer
One business in the College Park area can help you do that. Bad Summer Vintage is an e-commerce shop that primarily sells vintage products. All items are over ten years old and consist mostly of secondhand clothing and accessories, but there are also other things like books, stickers and bags. Bad Summer Vintage acquires items of any style or genre from a variety of places like thrift stores, estate sales, private collectors and donations, said owner Matt Patterson.
As an e-commerce business, shopping is mainly done on Bad Summer Vintage’s website. But don’t worry about not being able to see items before you buy them –you can contact the shop to schedule a meet-up to view the items before you choose to buy anything. Item returns can also be done by meet-up if you are local. As a special incentive for University of Maryland students, all deliveries come with a snack, such as a randomly selected Frito-Lay product or Oreo six-pack.
Image credit: Ryan Lepore for The Campus Trainer
Patterson strives to have the best items he can. That’s why items are inspected for blemishes or anything else that may compromise the customers' enjoyment of the item before they are acquired.
“I want to help customers not just take their money,” Patterson said.
Shanelle Jacobs, a loyal customer of Bad Summer Vintage, has made several purchases from the store. Her favorite is an album poster of The Doors. Jacobs appreciates that Patterson is “very particular” about the items he acquires to sell.
Image credit: Ryan Lepore for The Campus Trainer
Henry Spies, senior animal science major at UMD, was not familiar with Bad Summer Vintage. But, Spies has bought secondhand clothing elsewhere because he feels that as a college student, he needs to budget himself. Spies thinks it’s hard to buy clothes online and isn’t a fan of vintage but said that the “meetup idea is smart.”
Mireia Toda Cosi is in the first year of her doctoral program in Second Language Acquisition at UMD. She has purchased secondhand clothing because she believes it’s good to reuse whenever you can, but she isn’t a big fan of buying clothes online. Toda Cosi said that, “[a] meetup is nifty” and makes it “more enticing” to buy clothes online.
If you are wishing for an actual location for Bad Summer Vintage, you’ll be in luck when the weather gets warmer and flea markets come back in season. If you check out the flea markets in Germantown, Fairfax and Alexandria, Bad Summer Vintage will have tables where they will be selling their products. Come have a look!
