On a recent Friday afternoon, after the baby and I got unimaginably bored with the four walls of our house and the crinkle paper/jingle bells therein, we set out to conquer walk the neighborhood, as so many mothers and babies have before us. After nine years, these streets are as familiar to me as my own medicine cabinet — cluttered, homey, filled with equal parts useless and superfluous good and services — yet on this particular day, near the corner of Grand and West 42nd Street, an olde-timey metal sign signaled a portal to Brigadoon. “Vintage Store Open,” it beckoned, an invitation I’d never spotted despite storming the block hundreds of times. “Shall we?” I asked the baby. She kicked her legs in agreement.
Enter 316 Vintage, the best shop you’ve maybe never heard of. The owner, Mike, prides himself on curating “pure” vintage — items thirty years and older — which renders this chockablock establishment as part antique barn, part Brooklyn consignment, part rock ‘n roll t-shirt dispensary. Like Brigadoon, its hours are fleeting — Friday, Saturday, Sunday only — and once an item is gone, it’s gone FOREVER. My first thought after staring down a wall of Hummel-esque figurines was: how did I not know this existed? My second was: I can’t wait to tell Erin White!
Enter, now, Erin O. White, the kind of friend you dream of having as a kid, the kind of friend who knows just what a miracle it is to find an antique barn-Brooklyn consignment-rock ‘n roll t-shirt dispensary in your backyard and will celebrate with you accordingly. Cut, now, to 24 hours later, when she, the baby, our friend Oron, and I burst out of Brigadoon clutching the deal of the century. The century! I thought about telling you about this deal myself, but I thought you’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth. So, without any further ado, let’s hand the microphone over to my beloved friend.
So what's the deal with Erin White? Tell us a little about yourself!
I’m a writer, mother, wife, sister, friend, gardener, and resident of cozy Kingfield, Minneapolis. I am also a shopper!
On a scale of 'I have transcended the desire for earthly goods' to 'I've gotten in fights at sample sales,' how much do you love a deal?
I fall somewhere around ‘I’ve made life-long friendships in the communal dressing room at Daffy’s (RIP).’ I love a good deal, but more than anything I love sharing a deal. What’s that quote? A joy shared is a joy doubled? Well then, a deal shared is an additional 30% off.
Where does your love of a deal come from? Do you come from a long line of dealmakers, or have you forged your own path through the jungle of capitalism?
I have dominant dealmaking genes on both sides of my family, although my father’s skills are a little more, shall we say, industrious. He’s less interested in getting a good deal than in getting things for free. He still wears a down coat from 1978, and even in 1978 he didn’t buy the coat—he mail-ordered a kit from Norway and sewed it on a machine he bought at the Colorado Springs Junior League Trash to Treasure sale. My mom, on the other hand, is a Grand Slam champion shopper.
As I was saying, I recently bore witness to you getting a jaw-dropping deal at 316 Vintage. Could you walk us through the process, including the moment where the extremity of the deal revealed itself?
What a day we had! We were bopping around, trying on 1980s Nikes (you), buying a stack of vintage hankies (me), and trying not to make eye contact with the Frye boots (both of us), when I decided to take a breather and plopped into a chair by the front door. Right at eye level was a shelf of handbags, all of them priced at $10. Now I LOVE a handbag, but I tend to adhere to an uncritical and pro-capitalist view that one should pay a lot for one. How else would you know if you liked it? (JK, but not really.) I like Italian leather. I like fancy hardware, and silk linings. I like monograms. For this reason—and the reason that I am not European aristocracy or even formally employed—I own exactly one nice bag.
So I was sitting there at 316 Vintage, looking at the purses that were, by any measure, a little sad and strange and eerily reminiscent of elderly people watching television in the common room at a nursing home, when a few of them started to sparkle a bit. There was a baby blue rattan number that wasn’t half bad, and a slouchy red patent leather that looked like it might have some life left in it, although not a life I felt called to share.
And then there she was. And here is where I get a little fuzzy on details. Did I pick up the bag first? Did you? Did Oron? Did baby Harriet reach for it? What I can say is I fell in love. Her wide, solid bottom. Her brass hardware. Her stitched leather handle. Her secret key hidden in the change purse. (Let me pause here and say I’ve been married to a woman for 23 years, so I feel a-okay about gendering this handbag.) Readers, I bought her.
I threw my hankies, phone, wallet, sunglasses, and Harriet’s pacifier into the bag’s capacious interior, and we were off. Oron made a few jokes about Mary Poppins, but I didn’t care. Sally, I think you then looked inside and saw that it was made in Italy? We were happy about that, but we didn’t yet know just how happy we would be.
The googling began when I got home.
I typed Roberta Di Camerino Italy into the search bar, and I waited. Do you know what I saw? A vintage purse with a number under it, and that number needed a comma. It wasn’t the bag I had just purchased, but it was—like the bag I had just purchased, for TEN DOLLARS—a Roberta Di Camerino.
Who is this Roberta Di Camerino, nee Giuliana Coen? According to a poorly translated Italian website, she hailed from Venice, fled the fascists for Switzerland during WWII, and designed her first bag, the Bagonghi, for GRACE KELLY.
That’s right, Grace Kelly. And Madonna. And Isabella Rossellini. And now, ME.
The best part of this deal is that I loved the bag before I knew what it was worth. It was a real Shrek/Paperbag Princess/Beauty in the Beast moment. Does this speak to my perceptiveness, my intuition, my innate sense of beauty? No, not really. But it makes me feel like I got a really great deal.
You have two adolescent daughters whom I ADORE. In addition to teaching them essential lessons about self-possession, kindness, decency, humor, etc etc...are you also schooling them in the art of the deal? (the good kind)
I want so many things for my daughters, but more than anything I want them to know what they want, and what they are worth. Instilling them with this self-knowledge has proved to be a wildly strenuous task, seeing as I’m raising them in a world that wants nothing more than to tell them what to want (whatever it’s selling) and how much they are worth (never enough). What I’ve tried to teach them about a deal is that it’s only real if it’s something they want. You can’t buy something just because it’s cheap. Would you pay full price for this? That’s the question I want them to ask before they reach for a deal. If they put said deal back on the shelf 50% of the time, then I’ve done my job.
***
Thank you, so much, Erin, for sharing your delightful discovery with us, and for your delightfulness writ large and general. Now let’s move onto the deals of the week!
* It’s BOGO Blizzard time at Dairy Queen through April 14th! Ben and I went yesterday and I ate myself ill on a mini frosted animal cookie. You have to get the app, but trust me, babe: you’re worth it.
* It’s also Target Circle week, and in addition to a bunch of discounts, etc, if you spend $70 with your Target card you get $10 back, aka basically MAKING MONEY.
* The deal with BIG IN SWEDEN is that she’s off to the printer! Next time you see her she’ll have a hard spine and a jacket and everything! While we wait, here’s a SNEAK PREVIEW of the blurbs on the back. I wish all of you had jobs where a season of work entailed haranguing colleagues into saying nice things about you. After you get over the embarrassment, it’s pretty fun.
Stay tuned for more hopes and dreams and occasional schemes!
xosally
LOVE!!! 💼