The Portland Issue

Culture cultivating uniqueness

How Portland’s Thrifting Scene Encourages Sustainability by Staying Weird

Dotting the Hawthorne District are racks and racks of clothes. Clothes right out of your most eclectic, queer, wild dreams spill out of the vintage resale shops that keep Portland fashionably weird and sustainable. 

House of Vintage, sitting prettily with its turquoise storefront on Hawthorne Boulevard, is a maximalist’s fever dream. Novice and seasoned thrifters alike get an authentic taste of Portland’s vintage culture amongst the slickly dressed employees sprinkled throughout the massive store. Rooms upon winding rooms have clothes hanging from racks, doors, the walls, the ceiling, lavishing shoppers’ eyes with every fabric, texture, color, and style imaginable. 

According to employee Blair, House of Vintage — one of Portland’s 50-plus vintage resale shops — is frequented about equally by tourists and Portland locals. Stocked by an array of individual vintage vendors, Blair became a regular customer at the store after moving to Portland earlier this year. 

“Shopping here means being authentic,” they said excitedly while mapping out a few of their favorite outfits. “In Portland, I guess weirdness is being 100% yourself, without judgements, for inclusion. A lot of people channel it through their style — if you walk around the city, everyone’s bringing it, that weirdness.”

When Blair thrifts, their eyes scan for textures — silky, satiny, lacey, mostly. In terms of a color palette, they’ve been feeling “all-black moments” as well as lighter, pastel ensembles. Thrifting for Blair is about gut instinct and what they’re drawn to on the rack. Simply allowing an enticing color, texture, aesthetic, gender presentation, or shape to inspire experimentation is where the fun in thrifting lies — or as Blair says, “manifesting your own uniqueness.”

Arthi — sporting thrifted items and a frog backpack — agrees. After moving to Portland a couple years ago, Arthi’s found a new affinity for sustainable fashion. In addition to the unique styling they can achieve, Arthi is drawn to thrifting because it brings a sustainable lifestyle to their closet.

“I’d feel icky whenever I walked through Forever 21, H&M,” Arthi says. “Even if it ends up at a thrift store a few months later, at least then I’m consuming fast fashion more sustainably.”

Although nothing hurts a thrifter more than picking up a nice top and seeing that the label is from a fast fashion outlet, framing consumption in the most ethical, sustainable way possible is a hallmark of Portland’s approach to style. But Arthi notes that most of the thrifting spots in Portland are vintage resellers, as opposed to traditionally thrifty big box stores like Goodwill. 

At the racks outside of House of Vintage wander Juan and Ryan. The pair are simply, sleekly dressed, with vintage-curated touches of personal aesthetic. Ryan, visiting from LA, is having an all-black moment, from his shades to his vest to his wide-legged linen trousers. While providing commentary on composition of proportion and juxtaposition of textures, Juan brings colorful excitement with his cheetah print top; the cherry on top of his outfit is his new favorite staple, cowboy boots. 

Having lived in Portland for six years, Juan has observed a shift in the sustainable shopping sphere. Although he has always shopped with intention — “why make more clothes when you can reuse,” Juan posits — rising costs have become a partial barrier to infusing the style he wants into his closet. 

“When I first started thrifting, I was thrifting out of necessity, you know? I’d pop into Goodwill because that’s where I could shop, that place became my style oyster,” Juan said. “But, damn, now at these vintage places, costs are high. That’s the price of originality.” 

Originality should come cheap in Portland, the city that markets itself off of “keeping itself weird.” Portland’s vintage scene has cultivated a culture of normalized weirdness. No one’s afraid of sticking out because everyone is; “be yourself” isn’t a kitschy catchphrase but a true lifestyle. 

And that is truly reflected by the fashionable folks at House of Vintage, who all, by chance, were queer. Not all fashionable people are queer, but all the queer people I met were in fact dressed to the nines. Society is not structured for queerness. Portland’s ecosystem of oddity, however, draws out pride for both identity and self-acceptance, which are inevitably reflected in how Portlanders dress. 

‘Weird’ has a negative connotation — like unique, but in a bad way. Portland has taken back the term, and thrifters wear their weird hearts on their sleeves. “Keep Portland Weird” is the city’s reclamation of radiant, personal uniqueness in its style culture. So yeah, House of Vintage, Portland style, and the city itself are weird if weird means caring about where your clothes come from; trendy if trendiness means merging ethicality with originality; fashionable if being fashionable means living up to your own individuality. 

Words: Kat Shok

Photos: Lisi Ludwig