Today’s vintage market perfectly juxtaposes old clothing with modern commercialism.  That vintage sweater from Screaming Mimi‘s or Nasty Gal wasn’t always cleaned and styled and packaged up so nicely for you.  It didn’t carry a $100 price tag either.  No; after its first life in the 80s or 90s, it was pulled, crumpled and damp, from a bail of clothing in a rag house, worth only pennies.

A rag house is a used clothing retailer: unsold thrift stock is compacted into bails and shipped into their warehouse.  They can receive bails of apparel, shoes, belts, bags, fabric remnants, etc.

The warehouse of EMR, or Environmental Material Recovery, in Los Angeles

Bails of clothing

Rag houses like EMR sort out the valuable pieces to sell wholesale to vintage dealers, and the rest is shipped overseas.  EMR sells their discards by the pound to impoverished parts of the Philippines.

The Rose Bowl in Pasadena holds its world famous flea market on the second Sunday of every month.  Though general admission begins at 9 am, a “special preview VIP admission” is offered beginning at 5 am for $20 per person.  At 5 am in the valley it’s pitch black and freezing cold.  With over 2,500 vendors, who would want to shop then?  The next and final tier of buyers would, looking for merchandise to sell at retail price points.  The vast majority are Japanese buyers, equipped with flashlights and rolling carts.  They buy in bulk and ship product back to Japan’s booming vintage market.  The majority of commerce at the Rose Bowl takes place before the sun is even up; the celebrity sightings and super chic L.A. kids are a mere addendum.

Last Sunday, a group of us from TMY headed up to the Rose Bowl to see what we could find.  I have been there many times and in different incarnations. I’ve been a vintage-obsessed high schooler, I’ve sold there for EMR, I’ve bought for a retail store I used to work at.  This time I was myself: wary, educated, but still wanting a certain 1970s sweater.

Sources: 1, 2