Vintage and Retro Sale

Overview

A lot of strategies exist for vintage shopping — closing your eyes and feeling for fabrics that won't give you hives, going to wealthy suburbs, having a good tailor, saved searches all over the internet, pure persistence — to which can be added: getting a collection of inner-city fashion kids to drag the spoils of their curated closets into the top floor of a graffiti-stairwelled, warehouse-apartment hipster-hideout and rummaging through it.

Hibernian House, host to art spaces, film nights, pop-up sales and parties you don't remember, now has a regular vintage sale put together by SixOhOne, the occupants of the top floor. The eyrie roomful of racks of mens' and ladies' clothes is replenished daily, tagged for provenance so you get extra anecdote value and gently priced at an average of $20 or so with single-figure accessories. Given the multiple contributors, you get all the disparate styles, periods and sizes of op-shopping, alongside the coherence and elimination of hopeless pieces that pricier vintage affords. The homey venue has a musical selection that encourage sashays in your items of choice/ridicule and a couch for the paraded-out to flop on. It's cash only (but close to an ATM) and use of public transport is encouraged.