Three Rivers Vintage: A Trip Back in Time
Griffin Sendek | Off The Bluff | 01/01/2021
In a little shop on East Carson Street, old is new and out-of-style is in. Three Rivers Vintage is a vibrant home for yesterday’s fashions.
Strolling past the storefront window, Three Rivers Vintage first appears as an unassuming clothing shop.
With a passing glance, the quartet of mannequins in the crystal-clear window appear ordinarily dressed. Upon closer inspection, the shop comes to vivid life.
Lean a little closer and the shop pulls you in. A plastic female figure finely styled in a tweed vest stitched together with spiraling woven leather immediately catches the eye. Peeking from underneath the vest is a burnt orange buttonup whose overflowing deep V-collar perfectly accentuates her chunky gold necklace. It’s clear that this isn’t just any thrift store.
Three Rivers Vintage owner Scott Johnson opened the store six-and-a-half years ago on a whim.
“I was retired and I was bored, so I needed something to do, and from nowhere I decided to open a vintage clothing store,” Scott says. “I had zero experience — I had never been in a vintage clothing store, I didn’t know anything about vintage clothing, I just said, ‘Let’s give it a shot and see what happens.’”
Since taking the leap and opening the store, Three Rivers has become the most comprehensive vintage shop in the city.
One step through the glass door is a leap back in time. Behind the register, clad in a dress straight off the disco dance floor and a beehive hairdo reaching to the ceiling, is house seamstress Kayla Ledkey, who greets everyone who walks through the door.
“Not only do I love clothes, but I love the atmosphere,” Kayla says.
Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” plays softly over the radio and the scent of a cinnamon candle fills a room that is packed, floor to ceiling, with clothing more colorful than an acid trip.
The items on sale go as far back as the 1860s and are as modern as the 1970s.
Many of the items on display at Three Rivers are so old their original owners are dead. The biggest source of vintage clothing for the store is people who, for obvious reasons, won’t be needing them anymore.
“95% of it comes from private buys. The phone rings all week long: ‘My aunt died,’ ‘my mother died,’ ‘my father passed,’ so we schedule private buys right at the houses and literally start digging through dresser drawers,” Scott explains.
The journey from the closet of a deceased relative to the store shelves is a multistep process that Scott has broken down to a tried-and-true formula that he’s followed for hundreds of sales.
“Make them an offer, bring it home, wash it, dry clean it, steam it, price it, measure it, curate it,” Scott says.
This process is what keeps the new items flowing and the quality high.
Three Rivers is a vintage clothing aficionado’s paradise, and according to longtime loyal customer Kathleen Kenna, the shop’s wide variety “has only improved over the last five years.”
“I feel [Scott] has the widest range of stuff, and he’s the nicest vintage store owner — always gives great advice,” Kathleen says.
Those who wear vintage daily flock to the shop, desperate to add items to their collection. Among them is Effie Pearson, who has worn vintage every day for the past 30 years.
“You don’t see this caliber of vintage. You see ‘90s, but this is much older stuff, and I love that they have Victorian,” she says.
Effie waltzed in wearing a plaid dress of turquoise, tan, red, navy and yellow, a color combo that by all means should be an assault to the eyes, but she makes it work. That’s the magic of vintage clothing: It goes against convention and makes the impossible possible.
“I love that it’s sustainable, things fit better and they have character, and who doesn’t love dressing with character?” Effie says.
Handwritten on the tag of every item is the decade it’s from. With years of experience personally handling hundreds of vintage pieces, Scott has learned to pinpoint the decades with ease.
“It’s just seeing, feeling, touching, loving over the last seven years,” Scott says. “You learn styles, shapes, sizes, patterns, type of material, type of button. It’s not an exact science because the decades kind of blended into each other.”
The different vibe the store gives off and the shopping experience are not a result of happenstance — everything about the store is carefully planned by Scott.
“I literally pick every piece that’s in here for its quality and condition,” Scott explains.
When garments are in need of some extra help, Kayla comes to the rescue with her sewing expertise.
“I do a lot of the restoration work, a lot of the mending, some of the intense stuff that needs taking care of so that it’s wearable for other people and off the shelf, and that’s part of the curation that we do here too,” Kayla says.
This work takes a delicate and gentle touch; however, there is a simplicity to the way that vintage pieces were crafted that Kayla finds easy to work with compared to modern-day clothing.
“A lot of our stuff is handmade. So, when it touches my hands I’m able to pick up where that person had left off,” she says.
The attention to the proper cleaning and care for each piece truly makes old feel like new. The drabby smell and overall dingy feel of stores like Goodwill are not present at Three Rivers.
The tag might indicate 20th century and the patterns and styles might be so far removed from any fashion today, but the condition of the garments doesn’t feel aged a day.
Carefully handling a dress in a plastic cover and examining the handwritten “1960s” on the tag fills one with an overwhelming sense of curiosity of all the places it has been.
It’s an unfortunate reality that in 50 years, vintage clothing stores sporting styles of the 2020s will likely be rare. The admiration for retro fashion might be timeless, but all modern clothing is not.
“The clothes made today are disposable. It’s not made well, it’s not quality,” Scott says. “You know the clothes from H&M and American Eagle and those mall brands aren’t going to be around in 50, 60, 70 years, ‘cause they just aren’t made as well as these [clothes] are.”
Everything has an expiration date — one day, even the clothes at Three Rivers will be lost to time. Until then, Three Rivers offers the unique opportunity to own a sliver of history.
Scott’s little shop on East Carson gives its customers the chance to continue the story of garments long forgotten — the ability to take a dress that hasn’t done the twist since homecoming 1966 and once again dance all night long is truly priceless. ●