25th - 27th October 2024
This trip has been packed with touring reuse places and meeting with reuse practitioners, but I also made some time over a weekend to visit Idyllwild, California where I worked in 2000-2001 teaching school aged kids about Astonomy. It's a beautiful mountain town and I took the opportunity of being so close to pay it a visit.
I was expecting not to think about reuse for a few days, but I couldn't help but stop in to a great looking vintage shop as I was driving through Palm Springs on my way there! You can take the girl out the vintage shop etc
Palm Springs, California
I'm used to feeling like a mystery shopper in these places after working on Revolve for so long, but now I also find myself scoping out the customers too - who are they, what are they looking for and why are they shopping here? Also the shop owners/managers - how are they projecting their shop, what is their motivation for doing this, and is it working??
In this particular shop there were three women on 'vacation' (holiday to us brits) who had just arrived in Palm Springs and were looking for outfits in keeping with the mid-century vibe here and a major reason why people come. I listened in and picked up a few good sales tips to squirrel away haha.
After this store I found another, and through conversation (I'm now very used to the "Hello. I'm Sam. I'm from Scotland and I'm on a 5 week tour all over the US looking at second hand places...") found out it was 'modernist weekend' in Palm Springs. What luck! It also explains the three woman in the previous shop.
"Modernism Week is a prestigious gathering that celebrates and fosters appreciation of midcentury and modern architecture, interior and landscape design, and historic preservation"
This also extends to vintage cars and clothing, because why not?
The shop owner points me in the direction of some other 'vintage' type places and some not-for-profit thrift chain stores too. The gap between 'thrift stores' and 'vintage stores' feels particularly big here. One services a need for the community to access low goods goods, and the other supports entrepreneurs to develop microbusinesses and allows savvy shoppers to buy 'unique finds'.
Vintage stores in here sell very particular styles and high end designer brands - absolutely understanding and catering to the market in Palm Springs. I was surprised to find a number of 'thrift' stores tsking in donations and retailing low cost textiles and homewares. The place I went to was large, and sold a bit of everything.
Angel View store in Palm Springs
Idyllwild, California
The town has certainly grown since I worked here 24 years ago. It's still a tiny town in the mountains but it seemed to be a real destination weekend place now with many more shops and restaurants. It caters really well to the tourism crowd and it apparently understands that weekend visitors want to shop vintage! In a place with an official population of only 3,491, there were two vintage stores (curated hand picked/bought pieces of a particular style), two thrift/antique stores and probably another 4 or 5 stores that had some element of second hand inside a 'regular' store. This isn't the first time it's struck me that blending second hand with new is a growing trend and I'm delighted that the lines are blurring and that stores aren't afraid to offer second hand or even bother to point it out - if something is good, it's good!
I've finally ran out of storage here so all the pictures are in this album on my flickr page
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