Up until a vintage item arrives in your hands…
If I look at myself 3 years ago, I remember I perceived a pretty high barrier of switching from only buying new items (online or in shops), to buying vintage items. Please do not judge me right now, but I felt like it was a bit dirty, since it has been worn by a certain number of people (who knows?).
And that is exactly why I am sharing this specific blog post with you.
Because - the funny thing is, when I started researching the topic more and more, I figured that this is not really the case. Contrarily, the look and feel of typical vintage shops is actually something I really like! The atmosphere really makes you feel like you are back in the 1930’s or so, which I personally love.
Today, I want to put the emphasis on explaining the extensive process of vintage clothing in detail, step by step.
Let’s get started at the moment the product arrives at the store or atelier. Good to know (!), in most vintage shops you are able to deliver your reused clothing items. Do you still remember my last post in which I told you to take good care of your clothing? Well, that is because delivering them to a vintage shop might be beneficial for you, since vintage clothing becomes more collectable and could be a great investment for the future.
Selection process vintage clothing
When the goods have arrived, a team of experienced employees carries out the official first quality and style check. This means, they carefully double-check whether a turned in fashion item is in good state. They do so according to extensive quality checklists.
If from the checklist, it turns out that the product is still worth selling to a next owner, but first needs some repair, the product is being repaired in the atelier. Again, by experienced employees.
Then, the garments are made ready to be washed carefully. Since items usually have been turned in by people, they pay attention to the cleaning process, especially because it is second-handed.
After washing all garments, another final quality check is conducted. This is to make sure that all garment that arrive in the store are still in a good enough state (after the repairing and washing steps of the process).
The garments that get through the tests, are eventually being labelled and security tagged.
As soon as this has been done, the items are packaged and made ready for transport to the vintage stores in Utrecht, in which the vintage items are being sold to you as the potential customer.
That is it! You just basically read the different steps that are involved in the careful selection process carried out before items are visible in vintage stores.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the different steps that I explained above. I am inviting you to comment on this!
I will publish my next blog post on Monday, it would be great to see you then :)
Follow me on Instagram @ut_vintageclothing as well for different content on the exciting world of vintage clothing. Do you agree? Please share your thoughts!
