Will Vintage Clothing Always Be Available?

[Marc Chevalier]

And is there a way to intercept the stuff before it leaves Germany? Or would one need to be a high volume wholesaler with massive warehouse space to fill?

You would need to be a big-time rag exporter. (Sadly, these fine clothes are called 'rags' in the biz.) Or, you would need to buy sorted bales of 'rags' from one of the exporters. (The clothes are sorted into fabric categories -- corduroy, leather, wool, cotton, etc. -- and compressed into large, rectangular bales that are covered in shrink-wrapped plastic and tied with straps.)


Of course, if the rag exporter doesn't do business in your country (let alone city), then you're out of luck. And since the U.S.A. generates enough of its own used clothing to be able to clad the rest of the world, there's little call for German rag exporters to send their stuff here. Third World/developing countries, on the other hand, have a great need for cheap, well-made clothing, even if secondhand.


About 20 years ago, a vintage clothing chain in California, American Rag Cie., did import some 1930s German stuff: pointy collared shirts, waistcoats, horsehide coats, etc. No more, though.

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[RetroModelSari]

Hmmmmm...... I should find out where they store it. I´d happily exchange my "new" clothes that I don´t wear anymore to dig through there!

The sad thing is that you hardly find anything from those decades in the Second Hand Shops. There you get mostly things ranging from late 60s to 80s so if this stuff is still in the warehouses it doesn´t automatically mean that Germany is the Vintage-Wonderland. Sad but true

An amazing fact: so much 1900s-1940s German clothing is still around (mostly overcoats, frock coats, leather coats, suits and tuxedos), that it's being exported monthly to developing countries around the world. Tons of it arrives in Chile, and I used to have a field day buying vintage frock coats, fur-lined overcoats, horsehide long coats, loden coats, double-breasted suits, etc.


You'd think that WWII and its millions of homeless German refugees would have consumed the stuff. Apparently, it's been sitting in sanitized warehouses for the past six decades. The condition of these vintage pieces is usually excellent. We're not even talking moth holes. What gives?


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[Martina]

Marc is right..... but the same is true about vintage clothing here in the States! I know for a fact that one of the biggest thrift store chains here in central NY makes bales of its clothing that don't sell and sends them off to developing countries. I know that parts of Africa are huge receivers of this clothing.

Imagine the man that gets the 1940s suit that doesn't even know its age... and then goes out farming in it.

And there's no way to intercept it, once it's baled up and ready to go. The only way is to intercept it AT the thrift stores before baling time.

A minister friend of mine ran one of the missions, so I know and I've seen. Gosh, it's a terrible thing to see a piece of material stuck to the side of a bale and to KNOW that it is part of something probably fabulous!!

~Martina~