Vintage Fashions Have Feel Of Luxury
People who wear vintage clothing tend to be artistic and creative, White said. And they will personalize an outfit with accessories. Her customers from Central Massachusetts are usually looking for vintage wedding dresses or something to wear to a party, she said.
White sells to a lot of New York shops and to museums such as Colonial Williamsburg, the Smithsonian and for the archives of the Fashion Institute of Technology. A theatrical costumer is a regular customer, and White said she’s seen her clothes in PBS productions and in the “Chronicles of Young Indiana Jones” television series.
White attends eight to 10 trade shows a year where she runs into designers or their buyers who buy vintage clothes to examine the designs and construction.
Right now, the market for vintage wedding dresses is extremely strong, said White.
“Maybe because we’re turning to another century. There’s a lot of nostalgia,” she said.
Unlike boutique owners who will never run out of stock as long as there are manufacturers, White’s market could dry up at any time. In the past decade she’s seen a big difference in the availability of vintage wedding dresses. If she’s forced to, she’ll focus on another era, she said.
White holds on to very few items. She acknowledged, however, that she’s sentimental about items made in Upton.
“And I’ve been here only 12 years, so I’m a newcomer,” she said, adding that she has a child’s straw-like hat made of rice paper, one of the first made in Upton, around 1850. “I’ll never part with it.”
