Did you suppose I might begin a narrative about New York Metropolis’s finest thrift shops with a line by Macklemore? Please.
I’ll begin with a Little Mermaid textual content: “Take a look at this treasure, untold treasures/What number of wonders can a cave maintain…I’ve devices and gizmos galore/I’ve whozits and whatzits galore…However who cares? No drawback,/I would like extra.”
I do not suppose there have been Plato’s Closets beneath the ocean, however the mermaid’s phrases definitely resonate with savers. When you get your fingers on the second-hand bug, it turns into a full-fledged pastime. And with a metropolis as sturdy as New York Metropolis, you higher consider the second-hand market is filled with one-of-a-kind finds.
“There’s one thing about New York,” says Kathleen Sorbara, proprietor of Chickee’s Classic in Williamsburg. “Individuals do not have quite a lot of house, so there’ll at all times be provide and demand in thrift shops, just because individuals are at all times throwing issues away as a result of they do not have sufficient house in New York Metropolis.” (I by no means thought I might be pleased about Manhattan’s petite closets—that’s, till the day I got here throughout a classic Fendi high. God bless.)
However the place to start out? There are quite a bit from retailers promoting all the things from second-hand purses to Hypebeast sneakers. Janelle Greatest, the proprietor of Williamsburg’s Store 86, admits it may be unimaginable to be thrifty in New York Metropolis. Whether or not you are a born and bred New Yorker or simply visiting for a weekend getaway, you’ll want to be a strategic shopper.
So I dug deep, polling vogue editors and business insiders to seek out out which of the town’s thrift shops and classic shops are literally value a subway trip. Forward, you will discover all the things you’ll want to learn about the perfect thrift shops in NYC.
(Editor’s Observe: Every retailer is grouped into the next classes. $ means a retailer with essentially the most objects beneath $100; $ means a retailer with all kinds, normally between $50-200; and $$ denotes a store with few to no objects beneath $100 and plenty of over $200+)