Students rummaged through vintage clothes racks looking for great deals.
Old university jerseys, Disney shirts, leather jackets, and jean brands that are no longer being made and sold were among the finds.
The Midday Vintage Market was held on Feb. 15 for the first time at Algonquin College.
High-quality second-hand items at affordable prices were featured.
Megan Edwards, an 18-year-old student in hotel and restaurant management operations, was excited to find a mint-condition Manchester City jersey and two Reebok jerseys. She said, “there is a big city vintage cool.”
“I’ve always liked going to the thrift stores. You know it’s cheap,” Edwards said.
“Upcycling, that’s the big thing,” Darby Schuldaus, a 20-year-old student in the dental hygiene program, said.
“Thrifting is kind of in. It’s fun to find weird funky stuff that you don’t normally find in regular stores.”
Brady Warnock is the owner of Thrifting with Brady. He is an alumnus of Algonquin College in the building construction technician course. He said, “I’ve been thrifting basically my entire life just because we didn’t grow up well off and it was the only way of getting clothes.”
Warnock started his business when his friends encouraged him to start reselling cool stuff he would find in a thrift store.
The vendors at the event met up through an Instagram page called Midday Picnic, so they decided to call themselves Midday Market. Warnock is one of the four organizers of this event.
Kimberly Cassell is the owner of the Downtown Underground. She is an alumna of Algonquin College in community studies and the University of Ottawa in psychology.
She has been selling vintage clothing for 10 years and picks up items from Facebook marketplace, Value Village, Salvation Army and estate sales. “There is a really cool phenomenon that’s happening people come in and I’ve been buying in the store a lot,” said Cassell.
Maddie Craig, owner of MC Closet, has been selling vintage clothing for four years and takes it one step further. She took up sewing during COVID-19 and is now making new items out of old clothes and creating tote bags to upcycle items that she vends.
She said, “I quit my job and decided to take this one, full-time.”
Craig is also a full-time student at the University of Ottawa.
The vintage sale was a great success for the vendors and they hope to come back to the college more often.