The New
Vintage
Saturn Collection
CURATING NOSTALGIC COLLECTIONS by Dakota Parks Photos by Guy Stevens
ashion trends often rotate with the seasons and come in and out of style like clockwork. Mom jeans, bell bottoms, chunky sneakers, bucket hats, hair scrunchies and even neon windbreaker jackets are all back in style. If you ask a vintage collector, however, vintage never goes out of style these days. As consumers learn more about the consequences that industrial fast fashion has on our planet, from the 2,700 gallons of water it takes to produce one cotton t-shirt to the average garment only being worn three to seven times before hitting the landfill, sustainability is a leading reason to shop vintage. The local vintage scene in Pensacola is sprawling, from the colloquial “antique alley” on Navy Boulevard to pop up vintage markets all over downtown Pensacola. While vintage collectors are constantly tracking down new thrift stores, clothing exchanges, garage sales, estate sales and hidden gems they will take to their hoarder-esque graves, most of their business now happens on Instagram. The new vintage scene is influenced by 90s clothing now classified as vintage. Fueled by online shopping and social media, it is constantly driven towards nostalgia, giving clothing, furniture and home goods a second chance at life. Downtown Crowd spoke to some of the veteran vintage shops in Pensacola to learn more about their styles, niches and vintage hoards. 12 | DOWNTOWNCROWD.COM
@saturncollection
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ike a true vintage clothing connoisseur, Van Smith, 34, recalls that her itch for vintage came from adolescence when she needed an outfit for a hippiethemed middle school dance and her sister took her to the now closed store, Years A Go-Go, to buy some bell bottom pants and a tie dye shirt. From that moment on, she was hooked and began to frequent that same vintage shop and gravitate toward late 60s and early 70s psychedelic hippie and disco-era clothing. Smith has always had an eccentric clothing taste, and the clothing she sells is filled with bright colors, funky patterns and plenty of vintage accessories to complete any look. Her business, Saturn Collection, previously had a storefront located inside Miles Antique Mall for four years before Hurricane Sally destroyed the building. Now she primarily sells online on Etsy and offers local pickup from her porch. “I am drawn towards the particular patterns that came out during the 10-year period from 1963 to 1973,” she explained. “I’ve been doing this long enough that I can actually tell the difference between a floral pattern from the 2000s and a floral pattern from the 1960s. I don’t have to physically flip through every shirt on the rack anymore. I can just slowly walk down the aisle and look at that sliver of fabric that is in between every single blouse and pull out the vintage material with my eyes.” Saturn Collection sells everything from vintage denim shorts, leather jackets, 50s and 60s era velvet dresses, to disco jumpsuits, floral and psychedelic pattern dresses and 90s band tees and pins. Van Smith also
runs the Pensacola Vintage Collective with Ryan Smith, owner of Obsolete Heat. Together they help coordinate and host vintage clothing markets in Pensacola to provide locals with a diverse selection of vintage clothing all under one roof. Their next market is on October 9 at Odd Colony. “I think I’m a bit of a vintage purist in the sense that I don’t want to walk into a mall and purchase a pair of bell bottom jeans off a rack,” she explained. “I would rather wear a pair of the 1940s military dungarees that created the bell bottom style. However, I’m not a purist when it comes to altering vintage. I think that if you buy a garment and it doesn’t fit you right, you need to go straight to your tailor and get it to fit you correctly. But make sure your tailor is experienced in vintage fabrics because they’re different than modern fabrics. I constantly tell customers that I hope the garment I sell them is its last stop because I hope they wear it until it’s unwearable.” Smith also explained that sizing is a huge learning curve in shopping vintage because there is no standardization in sizing, and vintage sizes are completely different than modern-day sizes. She laboriously measures every inch of her vintage clothing and each of her orders comes with a tape measurer to use for future orders. She also regularly posts tutorials on how to properly measure clothing instead of measuring your body. “I really try to move the focus on measuring your favorite piece of clothing right now,” she explained. “If you like how it fits, measure it, and then compare those measurements to another piece of clothing that you’re interested in buying. Because your body is not meant to fit into clothes. Clothes are meant to fit onto you.”
