Is it a rave or a vintage clothing sale?
By Thomas Crone
When you buy clothing at Rock Star Rags, you work methodically.
First you find the warehouse it calls home, located in a somewhat downtrodden stretch of North St. Louis just off North Broadway and St. Louis Avenue. Once inside the massive space, you acclimate yourself to the organization of the room; it might seem chaotic, but that’s only partially true. Then you begin rifling through huge wooden bins, pawing into a seemingly bottomless tub of, say, Hawaiian shirts or capri pants. When you find a keeper, you stash it in your handy trash bag, which must stay in your hands at all times. And when you’ve finally gotten your fill of ironic T-shirts, lightly worn Levis and chunky overcoats, you slap the bag onto an industrial scale and pay out—in cash—the flinty price of $1.50 per pound.
It’s a system that’s won fans throughout the area, drawn to the every-so-often sales Rock Star Rags uses to reduce overstock. Taking place anywhere between five and a dozen times a year, the sales are advertised by way of an e-mail list kept by account manager Deb Johnson and, increasingly, by word of mouth.
“It’s both an income- and a stock-mover,” says Johnson. “It started out with band kids clamoring to get in. We decided to have a gathering of them one day, and if you couldn’t make it, you were out of luck.”
These days, the sales are treasured events where local vintage fans rummage through the endless stock with determined frenzy. The rest of the time, the space is given over to buyers from retail stores around the region, who pick through the Rock Star Rags bins with more precision.
Picking is an art in itself. Johnson points to Laura Wilson, the owner of Columbia’s Blackberry Exchange and an expert picker. “She’ll buy a bunch of T-shirts and make them into dresses, or she’ll deconstruct different pieces of denim.” The results are sold at her retail store in mid-Missouri and by way of the web.
Away from the many vats of sale items are 1,000-pound bales of clothing, crushed into cubes of jumbled fabric. They’re sent to and from the Rock Star Rags distribution outlet in Texas. Some wind up on the backs of American kids; others find their way into the closets of fashionistas in Tokyo and other Japanese cities. (Like moths to a flame, Japanese tourists have even been known to find their way to the Rock Star Rags warehouse when visiting the States.)
“Japan is glutted, especially in Tokyo,” says Johnson. “All the vintage stores are clamoring for a few items, like T-shirts—I just can’t get enough of those right now.”
She glances down at a bale of compressed shirts.
“It’s amazing, the things that come out of these.”
