Vintage Clothing Stores in Portland, Oregon

There has always been a huge volume of vintage clothing stores in and around Portland, Oregon. However, there has been a blossoming of the industry over the last ten years that has caused a veritable plethora of highly niched and unique little boutiques that have sprung up in quite untraditional areas.

Historically, vintage clothing hunters would find any number of little thrift stores dotting the streets and avenues of the little towns and neighborhoods that have been eventually gobbled up as Portland grew to become a major metropolitan area. Back in those days it was not only easy to find vintage treasures, but a savvy clothes horse could manage to pick up loads of these bountiful harvests for as little as $5.00 for a huge green garbage bag full.

Those days have long since vanished and the scene now is made up of ultra chic little intentionally merchandized retail resale shops that have been set up, stocked and presented by people who have made a fairly lucrative profession out of knowing how to mine the value from the clothing that has entered into the golden years of their existence.

There is one true arena of discovery and value that still exists, however. The Goodwill regional donation depot is located halfway between Beaverton and Hillsboro on the Tualatin Valley Highway. This gargantuan building is where all of the donation centers in the Northwest send their daily donations on a daily basis. The volume that is received by Goodwill is staggering by any measure. This enormous warehouse is filled and refilled several times daily by a steady stream of 18 wheelers that come to unload the vast inventories of donations of all kinds that are made on a constant basis. So huge is the total amount of clothing, Goodwill actually makes a significant area inside of the warehouse open to the general public. Goodwill sets up deep rolling tables that are ten feet long called bins, and dumps load after load after load of clothing and other miscellaneous fodder into these bins for customers to rifle through.

In addition to giving customers a first crack at un checked donations that could be of any value, it also sell the clothing items without classification for a price that is by the pound. The last time I went on a vintage clothing safari to "The Bins" the price per pound was $1.87, and there were no fewer that two hundred patrons who were happier than a pig in the stuff that makes pigs ecstatic rummaging through the fresh loads of recently donated clothing that ranged from vintage and antique to last years tackiest.

I was having a hard time understanding the point to such a scavenger hunt until a friend pointed out that she had managed to find no fewer than six pairs of "Red Line" Levi's. This meant nothing to me at the time, but when I watched her sell those jeans on craigslist and Ebay for an average of 80 to 140 dollars per pair I started to see the light very quickly. If you make it to Portland and have a hankering for vintage apparel, don't forget to drop by "The Bins" at Goodwill's regional donation depot. You'll be glad you did.