How LA’s vintage clothing inspires the latest fashion trends

It’s the third Sunday of the month, and Bob Melet walks the rows of clothing, jewelry, furniture, and curiosities at the antique market at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach. He’s been in the vintage game for over three decades, and is here running a booth of his own while buying for several clients and his store in Montauk, NY. On a 30-minute pass through the market, Melet snags a pair of vintage aviator sunglasses, a mesh crop top for a musician he knows, and several well-loved shirts.

Melet made a name for himself as the lead vintage buyer for Ralph Lauren back in the early ‘90s, when the veteran designer best known for polos started his Americana brand RRL. Buyers for many of the biggest brands are constantly scouring LA’s vintage racks in search of inspiration for their new lines. 

Band tees, faded jeans, and old workwear capture something that’s hard to replicate with newer garments – but that doesn’t stop designers from trying. In turn, vintage dealers adapt their wares to fit the modern market and respond to trends. 

The push and pull between vintage and modern fashion is why you might find some brand new jeans with that ‘70s flare cut, or run into a 20-year-old hat at the flea market that you thought you’d left behind for good in 2005.

Bob Melet shops for clothes in Long Beach for his clients and his store in Montauk, N.Y. Photo Credit: Zeke Reed.

Melet explains how Ralph Lauren helped ignite the modern fashion industry’s obsession with vintage. 

“The word ‘vintage’ in 1993 wasn’t really understood as it pertained to clothing, because it was a very, very, very small niche thing … at Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles or the Rose Bowl Flea Market,” Melet recalls. “Ralph immediately took it to the highest level.”

Melet’s expertise was — and still is — in high demand. He opened up a showroom in New York and another in Topanga Canyon with curated displays. 

“ I created storyboards and beautiful rigged mannequins, and each area had its own fixturing and feeling,” Melet explains. “I presented those to the design world at large, and they would take those vignettes and use them as inspiration in their own collections.”

As a young designer, Susan Lee was among those using old clothes for inspiration. These days she mostly sells vintage, but she got her start working under Diesel founder Adriano Goldschmied, considered the godfather of premium denim. The two used worn jeans to inform their new denim.  

“ There’s so many levels of inspiration to take out of it,” says Lee. “My collection has traveled all over the world with me to get wash inspiration, fabric inspiration. I mean, look how geeky that is. We’re geeks, you know?”

Susan Lee got her start as a designer with Diesel. Now she sells vintage at her Echo Park shop Wilder. Photo Credit: Zeke Reed.

Connor Gressit sells vintage at his booth at the Rose Bowl, where he regularly encounters buyers from big brands.

“The very first time that I was cognizant of a brand buying something off of me to reproduce, a fellow from a major brand in LA came to my booth. He bought a mohair cardigan,” Gressit says. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to reproduce these. And I think they’re going to be a hit.’ So he bought it, paid my price, no questions asked, took it home to his company, sent it to China to a factory, reproduced it. Did an okay job.”

But while Gressit sells to the fashion industry, he says he’s conflicted about it: “ I believe that industrial manufacturing is like an extremely evil thing and there’s no need to make any more new s**t at all.”

Even when the relationship is uneasy, dealers like Gressit rely on brands to pay top dollar. They may operate by a different ethos, but the vintage world and the modern fashion industry are deeply interwoven. After all, all vintage clothing was at one point new, and all new clothing that sticks around long enough becomes vintage.