"Everything I buy is vintage and smells funny. Maybe that's why I don't have a boyfriend.”-Lucy Liu
Brown leather lace-up DKNY boots. You pick them up in sweaty hands that suddenly feel far too cumbersome to hold such fine-looking items. Your turn them over, letting out the anxious breath that you didn’t even know you were holding when you realise that they are the right size. You sit down to try them on, struggling to keep your emotions in check and your body at a ninety degree angle to the earth’s surface. The boots fit your feet perfectly, and as the melodic sound of harps and violins fills your ears, images of star-crossed lovers reunited at the end of fairy-tales spring involuntarily to mind.
Ah, vintage shopping, a bright point in an otherwise dull and shadowed life. That dizzying sense of elation as you spot that special something, that delightful smell of must and history. Drape a vintage necklace around your throat and suddenly you are mysterious and intriguing, as gorgeous and ladylike as Holly Golightly.
So where does one get their vintage fix in Grahamstown? Among the multiple Peps, KFCs and coffee shops you can occasionally strike vintage gold. The Nearly New Shop on Hill Street (coincidently, the birthplace of the aforementioned boots) sells good-quality clothing, bags and shoes at affordable prices. Bentwoods Antiques Shop on Cawood Street is brimming with old-fashioned photo frames, vinyl, dresses and art. In Bathurst Street there is the Sunflower Hospice Shop, which sells clothes and books.
Lastly, when searching for vintage clothes, don’t forget your mother’s cupboard. Whilst she may not yet qualify as an antique herself, her sling bags and skinny belts certainly do.
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