A monthly open-air shop in Tuscaloosa is bringing vintage style back to the community. The collection of vendors and shoppers have been coming to the Druid City since 2022 with a quest for sustainability and high-quality fashion.
The Tuscaloosa Vintage Market, as they are known around the community, attracts vintage lovers and fashion addicts from all walks of life. This includes shopper Hailey Gomish.
“I'm shopping for my boyfriend because I need to fix it,” said Gomish. “He's wearing gym shorts. And, like, it's done. It's over with. I got him some cargo pants the last time, and they fit perfectly. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do that again. It's perfect.”
Gomish is a student at The University of Alabama and no stranger to the Tuscaloosa Vintage Market. She’s looking to help spruce up her boyfriend’s wardrobe. Gomish, like many other shoppers, is mainly on the hunt for vintage items to bulk up her curated closet. She said her favorite finds from the market include T-shirts, shoes, hats and sweaters.
“I have so many sweaters from here. Kind of like the Coogi sweaters and grandpa sweaters,” Gomish said.
Moving from stall to stall, shoppers have a lot to take in at the parking lot at Don’s Barber Shop on 15th Street in Tuscaloosa. Items range from 1960’s clothing to Y2K outfits to wardrobe pieces made almost a century ago.
One vendor, Troy Douglas, who owns Front of the Line Vntg, said he has pieces on his racks from a range of time periods, including the 90s, 70s and even as far back as the 30s.
Douglas said his shop has a little bit of everything, but his best-sellers are jean jackets and vintage sports tees. Items are priced starting at $10 but can go as high as $300. He said he budded into the retro business after needing a new set of clothes.
“One of my mentors in college, I was always thrifting, but he pushed me toward going to the thrift store because I needed a suit,” Douglas said. “Ever since then, I was in there just picking looking for treasures, finding cool T-shirts, and I was hooked. Ever since then, I found a niche of people that like vintage clothes.”
Across the aisle at the Tuscaloosa Vintage Market is Savannah Mooney. She began her shop, Sav’s Garden, about four years ago when she was in high school.
“I got into this because I've always loved thrifting and just old things for myself because of the sustainability aspect of it. It'll last you a lifetime,” Mooney said. “So, once I started to get a little too much for myself, I wanted to share it with the community.”
Mooney said Sav’s Garden presents secondhand pieces like Troy Douglas, but her main focus is on sustainable fashion, which is defined as the practice of selling items that are ethically made and environmentally friendly.
“Sustainable fashion is basically the buying of clothing that already exists upon this world,” Mooney said. “I like to think of it like going and buying a 90s T-shirt. Typically, those items are made in USA items. They are built to last unlike many things that we buy these days made in mass production. They're just simply not up to par with the standards that we used to have.”
Sustainability isn’t just practiced at the Tuscaloosa Vintage Market. It’s also popular in high-fashion circles. Vogue Magazine said as the amount of wearable pieces produced each year gets bigger, the quality of the garments gets smaller. Mooney agrees. She said this is especially true when new clothing trends come into play.
“We need to start using the things we have that will last us, because for trends, they all follow in cycles from different decades. Everything comes back. So, there's no need to continue to create more and more and more,” Mooney said.
Sustainability advocates said these clothing trends fall in and out of style quickly. It’s called “fast fashion.” This is a method of mass-producing large amounts of clothing quickly, often with cheap, synthetic fabrics.
Mooney said the appeal of fast fashion is that it’s more accessible and costs less upfront. But the tradeoff, she said, is the quality of the clothes isn’t as good, and shoppers often spend more in the long run. Mooney said this doesn’t just distress shoppers’ wallets, it also affects the environment.
“When we follow the trend cycle so closely, and we continue buying and buying and buying… we ended up donating that stuff. The thrifts [are] super full, and then they go to the landfills,” Mooney said. “Majority of the greenhouse gases that our earth is being affected by are because our landfills are so full of things that do not decompose, such as clothing and cloth materials and things like that.”
The World Bank reported the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions. This is more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Vendors at the Tuscaloosa Vintage Market said they are proud of the sustainability generated by their businesses. However, resellers said they have sometimes run into criticism for the markup on vintage pieces. Jordan Outhavong, owner of Vong Vtg, said that’s just part of the job.
“We might get a little bit of [flack] about reselling old clothes. But if we're not going out and finding the clothes and getting the conditions right, as in washing stains and all that stuff like that, who's going to do it?” Outhavong said.
Outhavong said if resellers weren’t rescuing quality clothes from landfills, the majority of discarded items would likely never find their way to the closets of people who would actually wear them.
“That’s what I feel like a lot of people don't realize is. If we don't do it, then it's just going to stack up in a foreign place, and it's never going to be seen again,” Outhavong said.
Customers don’t have to sacrifice style for sustainability at the Tuscaloosa Vintage Market. Trends come and go and come again, but quality vintage pieces can last a lifetime. Outhavong said these modern artifacts are worth the investment.
“You're paying a better price at a vintage market,” Outhavong said. “Because all these fast fashion stores and organizations they come out with new trendy things, but it's all coming from a different time period. Every generation comes back around to what we have now. Urban Outfitters. Abercrombie. They're coming out with like a vintage style T-shirt, but why not just get an actual vintage T-shirt for a quarter of the price?”
Almost all vendors at the market said the same thing. They want to play a role in ending fast fashion and helping the community shop sustainably. This is no different for Tanner Barnett, owner of Venus Glamour.
“I think the whole mission for everybody is to kill fast fashion,” said Barnett. “It's now to the point where it's ending up in landfills, and it's being overproduced to the point where nobody wants it.”
Barnett is on his own mission to kill fast fashion by giving old jewelry new life. With a family history in jewelry, Barnett is doing what he knows best while bringing vintage into the modern era.
“I started with the clothes, and I was like, hmm, everybody's got clothes. I want to do something fun. And then my family history is in jewelry. So [I] kinda took something I knew and had sources,” Barnett said.
Barnett said the real draw for him is the sense of community found with other vendors. For him, selling vintage is much more than shopping for old clothes.
“I love meeting the people. You just never know who you're gonna meet or talk to,” Barnett said. “So, after the full year, we're all pretty close. So, it's kind of like a little like family that you travel with.”
The Tuscaloosa Vintage Market is a monthly staple for the community of Tuscaloosa. The market can be found in the Don’s Barber Shop parking lot on 15th Street once a month. The next one is set for February 4, from 11 a.m. to 5.m., just follow the crowds.
