As a student, having to manage my money to fund my style is quite difficult. I mainly shop online on ASOS and Prettylittlething as most things on their are a reasonable price and really cool. However, recently after watching a YouTuber named Hayley of ‘Hayley’s Corner’ I fell in love with thrift stores and the idea of buying vintage clothes that already have a massive story behind them. Therefore, instead of buying clothes straight off a website or in store I have decided as one of my New Year’s resolutions I am going to branch out of my comfort zone and visit more charity shops and kilo sales in order to get the same experience as one would have at a thrift store in the UK. The place where I live (Blackpool) doesn’t seem to have the best selection of charity shops or vintage stores so this means that my journey to find the best vintage shop has begun.
So far, I have visited a small vintage store in the northern quarter of Manchester which I can’t remember the name of, all I can remember is that they had the best selection of clothes and only cash payments were accepted which I loved because there were rails upon rails of Levi jeans and jackets, vintage Nike, Adidas and so many more and most were priced below £20 which was great. I always make it a mission to visit this store whenever I’m in Manchester so I really should remember the name of it. But this is where the idea of finding the best vintage store began, I really love this shop but I feel like if it was to be compared to a thrift store I would rate it 6/10 due to the size of the shop but the quality of clothes were amazing, as they say quality over quantity.
As the search continued, I visited my local charity shops Oxfam and Age UK, in my opinion the passion for fashion in Blackpool or Poulton-le-Fylde is incredibly lacking as the age demographic is OAP’s which isn’t bad but it also means that the clothes are not really that vintage more like your grandma’s wardrobe from 2009 (which isn’t the look I’m going for). I did have a good dig through the hangers and bins to find any gems but I was unlucky, in addition because they are charity shops other miscellaneous items were sold like old CD’s and vinyls which I did try and have a look through but unfortunately nothing worthy was found. Therefore, I would give this section of the search a 3/10, the idea was great but in the end no vintage items were found apart from the box of old teddy bears. The nostalgia was real.
So after starting this mission I am planning on visiting The Regent in Blackpool town centre that has over 50 stalls of antiques and vintage items (they even have a cinema!). I’m also going to a kilo sale in Preston, so after these visits I shall do an update 🙂
POSE by Lydia 