Great Ascot!

July 15, 2008 9:29 AM

Lady mefites, what are your favorite online shopping sites for girly vintage wear?

I hate shopping in stores, so I've gotten the trick of eyeballing dresses online down to a science. I click through Ebay, but I find it overwheming and time-consuming.

I love a lot of Etsy's vintage selections, and I'm looking for clothing in that retro vein: secretary dresses, ascots, cinched waists, A-line skirts. I'm not into graphic tees or the like.

My upper range for a dress (I exist almost exclusively in dresses) is $80 for a knee-bucklingly awesome piece, but I generaly stay more in the $10-40 range.

posted by Viola to shopping (10 comments total)

Stop Staring is good for what you're looking for, though their regular prices are over your upper limit. You might have luck with a sale.
posted by orrnyereg at 9:43 AM on July 15, 2008

Honestly, a good hour on the eBay gives a wealth of results. I find a lot of my clothes on there.

Some hints for that would be to measure yourself and ask the sellers a lot of questions. Also, they break their vintage section down to the decade, so it's easy to get what you want with out wading through 1000s of t-shirts.

If the sellers are legit--they'll answer questions thoroughly and provide more pictures. Most of the time I spend maybe $80 max on something really grand...

I feel like I can find stuff on eBay that's been moderately marked up better than on the specialty sites that REALLY mark up their prices.
posted by dearest at 10:00 AM on July 15, 2008

I like Trashy Diva's dresses. Their stuff is generally above what I'd be willing to pay for a dress, but their Trixie dress is on sale right now for $34.
posted by runningwithscissors at 10:07 AM on July 15, 2008

I'll second Trashy Diva. I have a few and they're very well made. That Trixie dress is a bargain.
posted by Evangeline at 11:59 AM on July 15, 2008

I have had great experiences with ballyhoo but I am not sure they have much in your price range.
posted by crush-onastick at 12:47 PM on July 15, 2008

I think ebay is really the best place for this; you possibly may just need to change your search strategies so that you get relevant results instead of having to look through a bunch of crap. Ebay has some pretty decent search options once you dig into it. Still, 'vintage dress' gives you 20,000 results, which is clearly far too many to look through. Adding a year and a size, however, can bring it down to 100 or less, which is much more manageable. All ebay searches are available as RSS feeds, so once you get some searches you are happy with you can set them up in a newsreader so they're simple to browse.

Most of the people I know who buy clothes on ebay also tend to follow particular sellers, rather than searching through everything available (unless they are looking for an exact item).

with that in mind, here's a self-link seller recommendation: my girlfriend just started doing vintage on ebay; these first couple rounds the prices are likely to be bargains because she still has a lot of work to do on logistics (learning how to take and crop photos, writing descriptive listings, etc etc). I mention it only because she's also a fan of some of the things you've mentioned.
posted by fishfucker at 12:55 PM on July 15, 2008

There are a group of Vintage Sellers on Main Street Mall Online...many of them used to sell on eBay and have moved on to greener pastures.
Disclosure: I sell Vintage Sewing Patterns in a different mall there...but if you like to sew...;-)
posted by what-i-found at 2:21 PM on July 15, 2008

Just talked to my girlfriend, and she rec'd Rusty Zipper but otherwise said ebay or etsy. She is also a huge fan of Nasty Gal, which grew out of an ebay shop, but they are super-high-end and so a little out of your target price range (although they have essentially the same items of everyone else, just styled and photographed professionally).
posted by fishfucker at 4:17 PM on July 15, 2008

I've spent more time at Vintageous than I care to mention. Their prices are a little high for your budget, but you should be able to find some pieces within your range.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout at 9:17 PM on July 15, 2008

I found some great places through this question I asked a few months back.
posted by dog food sugar at 7:27 AM on July 16, 2008