An outdoor vintage market in Edmonton. Amanda Erickson/The Griff

University students are the target demographic for vintage shops. Did you know that vintage clothing vendors pop up at MacEwan?

Remember when ‘thrift’ was a dirty word? Hard to believe there was a time not so long ago where thrifting was something people were embarrassed to be caught doing. But then something in pop culture changed. All of a sudden people were proud thrifters. Compliments on someone’s jackets were followed with the words “Thank you, I thrifted it!” followed by a price worth bragging about. It was even more impressive if you could tote around how old the item was.

Vintage items are still highly coveted for their quality and authenticity. It’s this high demand that caused those items to no longer be surprisingly low in cost. Suddenly that Led Zeppelin t-shirt that cost your dad $10 back in the 80’s will run you up $70 because it’s got a paper tag on the collar.

Now, $70 is a lot for anyone to spend on a t-shirt with dry rot, but even more so for a student who just spent $4,000 on a semester’s tuition. That won’t stop the abundance of pop-up shops in the SAMU building from trying to get you to browse their wares. It may be confusing to some as to why they would set up shop in a university full of coffee guzzling, sleep-deprived 20-somethings who are living off paycheque to paycheque. But after speaking to vintage resellers on Whyte Ave, the reasoning makes perfect sense.

“I don’t come to campus with the intent of spending $75 on a single piece of clothing. I don’t think that a lot of other people do as well.” 

— Emily Desousa, statistics major at MacEwan

“We get some high school kids. I don’t think they fully understand it yet. They’re too used to spending $5 on TEMU still,” says Jake Ferbey, founder of Wildrose Vintage. He says his main shoppers are university students in their 20s.This appears to be the norm with other sellers in the area, a mix of high school and university students. The social consciousness of Gen Z has made us aware of the ramifications of buying those cheap, unethically sourced garments. If there’s anyone willing to spend a little extra to not support cheap labor, it’s us.

We also tend to forget the legwork done by these vintage resellers. They go out of their way to curate the best items they can find and bring them all together for your shopping convenience. “For us, everything is currently handpicked by myself or my brother,” says Jeremy Gelacio, co-owner of Go-Thru vintage. “We go through Value Village, Goodwill, garage sales, or maybe just a mix of online shopping.” 

Despite understanding the reasoning for an upcharge on curated clothing, some students would rather put in the legwork and search for themselves. “If I’m gonna try and find a cool t-shirt, I’m probably just gonna go to the Goodwill bins, or something. It’s just gonna be a lot less expensive and less marked up,” says MacEwan arts and cultural management student Kate Scott. “I’m definitely more conscious of [ pricing ]. I’ve definitely put back some pieces I really liked because they were too expensive. But thrifting is still way more affordable than vintage stores,” says Emily Desousa, a MacEwan statistics major.

Desousa says that vintage stores are too out of the way for her considering the higher prices. What about the pop-ups on campus?

“I think they’re dumb and I think they take up way too much space,” says Desousa. “I know that they don’t really have a choice of where they’re gonna go, but they always have so much, and they’re so big, and they’re always right in front of the stairs, or just in very high traffic areas.” 

Scott said she didn’t even know there were pop-ups on campus — not every student has to walk through SAMU. Another student we spoke to said the on-campus pop-ups were too expensive.

Vintage pop-up vendors know their demographic, and they know where to find us, but their cramped little space where they jam-pack all their items is un-shoppable enough that some might not even want to try. Anyone who is willing to brave the claustrophobic space may not be ready to spend their money on the fly.  

“I don’t come to campus with the intent of spending $75 on a single piece of clothing. And I don’t think that a lot of other people do as well. It’s a novelty but I also just kinda wish that if they were gonna bring in such big things, that they might just do something in the lookout and bring a bunch of them, or put them in a better spot because I don’t like it when they block everything off like that.” Desousa says.