I have often wondered where all my vintage gear REALLY comes from? Not the neat rails at Beyond Retro or Rokit, that's for sure. I dug up an old The Face issue and found an article about The Vintage Clothing Company in Liverpool, UK, the top suppliers of vintage clothing to shops and stalls all over the country including Topshop's vintage section. What started as a small collection of clothing in 1983 has now turned into an industrial estate sifting through 250 tonnes of jeans, T-shirts, shirts, jackets and trainers each year.
According to Richard Free, the company's founder, they buy from the USA, which is the natural home of denim workwear and T-shirts and also recycling firms in Poland which process up to 300 tons of clothing a week. Italy is the place to go for good knitwear and tailoring and there are cashmere recyclers in Prato, Italy, where hundreds of Albanian refugees hand sort wool garments. However, the bulk of their stock actually comes from Germany:
'Over the years, I've learnt how to smell the difference between German and American clothes. Some of the worst-smelling stuff comes from Germany. When the Berlin Wall came down, the European vintage clothing market was flooded. The East Germans were still wearing clothes from the late Seventies and early Eighties – fashion hadn't had a chance to develop. They wanted to get rid of all their clothes and we bought it up.'
So I guess my vision of lovely aristocratic-looking ladies dying in mansions and leaving behind all their beautiful garments, waiting for me to swoop in and pick them up is a bit wrong then!