L.A. has some of the best vintage in the game. These finds are a case in point

For every time you hear an Angeleno smugly say “I thrifted it,” there’s a story behind the last hands that held the garment. Maybe it belonged to a fabulous Hollywood costume designer. Maybe it was languishing at the back of a Silver Lake dad’s closet.

Either way, our clothes carry memory. While there are the big moments — like the dress your fave wore to the Oscars, or your first dinner at Damian — it’s the small moments in between that give a piece life. They’re the stains you can’t rub out, the holes around the collar, the crease marks forever etched into fabric. “Second life” is used often in this space, but it’s really one long, serpentine timeline.

Though fashion and passing down clothes are a collaborative effort, for vintage store sellers, a well-curated collection is a deeply personal act. Each seller brings their own story, knowledge, and imagination. We should all be thankful.

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In L.A., we’re lucky to have some of the best vintage stores in the game. Where else could you find Ben Davis in the same place as an Armani suit? For this story, I reached out to four vintage sellers and asked them to share their most cherished items — the ones they can’t bring themselves to pass on, be it from their own wardrobe or a recent acquisition. All of the stores opened within the last 10 years: Le Boudoir (2022) specializes in new, Paris-imported lingerie; Aralda Vintage (2015) is known for playful designer womenswear; Wild West Social House (2023) uses a membership model for rare and high-end finds; and Millersroom (2015) is a haven for quality denim and remixed button-ups and blazers.

From leather chaps to a vintage Dior coat, the items that these sellers shared are reminders of why they do what they do — and what makes a piece last a lifetime.

Clémence Pariente of Le Boudoir: Vintage A-1 Genuine Leather Chaps

I started collecting lingerie when I was about 15 years old. I would babysit at the time, and all the money from babysitting would go into this. I would never tell my mom, but I would wear those super big, long ’70s dresses and under, a full set: garter, stockings, corset. No one would know about it. I wasn't even dating. It was fully for myself. It had no male gaze involved in it. It was very much something that made me feel so empowered, so feminine, so confident. I felt strong. It was my own secret. Super punk, in my head.

My style was more sleazy vintage: crazy ’80s lace, red leather, studded pieces that were really influenced by all the metal I was listening to. I started riding motorcycles a few years ago because I went through a breakup, and I think I needed a good adrenaline rush. Something that would make me feel. I felt so depleted of self-confidence, and I was such a shell of myself. I was looking for something that would empower me, and I loved the idea of being able to ride motorcycles with other women.

Clémence Pariente of Le Boudoir

That's why I started thrifting sexy leather pieces. I loved it as a whole aesthetic, but I wanted to remove it from this motorcycling boy world. I like the idea of removing those pieces and recontextualizing them into something more empowering.

I consider every piece that I find in Paris a little treasure. They’re like little trinkets from my travels. The French brands are better, and it's easier for me to find some Dior pieces, for example, because they’re more affordable there. My customers love the romance and rarity because it comes from Paris.

But while on a ride in Idyllwild, I found these assless chaps, and I don't think I'll ever sell these ones, because I think this is the one piece that actually comes full circle. I rode in it, opened the store and used it to style a Playboy shoot.

I didn't ride for too long, but I think it gave me the confidence I needed to open the store. I thought that if I can ride a motorcycle by myself, even though I was terrified of even driving a f—ing car, l can do anything else.

Brynn Jones Saban of Aralda Vintage: 2004 Vintage Dior Coat

At a young age, I was really drawn to clothes and fashion. Music videos and magazines were an escape for me. It was this ultimate fantasy of mine to be able to see such wonderful clothes and dress in them.

I grew up with Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears in my prime teen years. It was incredible for me to experience that giant pop phenomenon through my formative years. The textures and the velvet and sequins of the time never went away. You find a lot of that at Aralda.

I started sixth grade in 1996, and “Clueless” was just everything to everyone. So I showed up to school with a pen with feathers all over it and a sequin shirt. I was so into expressing myself through clothes. Looking back, it was such an amazing time because I was so confident, and I didn't really care at all what people thought. Like, at some point, I wore a beeper that wasn't even working just because it was part of my look.

I moved to Hawaii from Portland after I graduated high school and went to school for a semester and a half, then dropped out. I stayed in Hawaii and worked random jobs at a sandwich shop and a hotel. Then, I moved to Honolulu and started working at this giant mall there called Ala Moana. On my breaks, I would stop by the fancy stores and get super inspired. That was autumn/winter of 2004, and I remember so vividly going into Dior. This was during John Galliano's tenure with the house. It was wild; there were crazy prints — plaids, leopard spots — in my favorite colors. Back then — I don’t even know if they still do this — they had these big flatscreens in the stores playing the runway show on loop. I remember standing there watching the whole show.

A couple years ago, I bought the insane giant cocoon jacket Gisele Bündchen wears in the show. I also had no business really even buying that because it's so rare and a collector's piece. It's so rooted into this memory of mine. I was like, f— it. I'm buying this, and it's very sentimental to me now. I was having a really good year at the shop, so I bought it not just for me but for my younger self.

The following year, Kensington Palace emailed the store asking for a 1950s Yves Saint Laurent for Dior dress we loaned to Bella Hadid. My store manager James [Gallagher] and I were like, ‘This has got to be a scam. Someone's just trying to steal our dress.’ But they told us they were curating this exhibition at the Kensington Palace, “Crown to Couture,” and they wanted to feature the dress in the show. So we flew to London, my husband and I, for the first time, and I finally wore my big, loud cocoon coat to the exhibition preview. I was in London, wearing my coat, on the dime of my business that I built doing all this.

Kyle Julian Skye Muhlfriedel and Max Feldmann of Wild West Social House: Vivienne Westwood 1970s Seditionaries Muslin Top, Vintage 2001 Gucci Snakeskin Karate Pants

Kyle Julian Skye Muhlfriedel: We’re building an ecosystem with Wild West Social House. I really do believe that if we put a moratorium on making clothing, nothing would change. We have all the clothing we ever need. I don't like a lot of how we're forced to interact with clothing. There hasn't really been any innovation in the past 100 years in it. We offer our members a way to consume clothing that's better, cheaper and more sustainable than what they've been offered. It’s a rising-tide-raises-all-boats ecosystem. And that's really what we're getting at here.

Kyle Julian Skye Muhlfriedel talking about Vivienne Westwood's vintage mid-’70s top.

My parents were both in the punk scene. These tops were sold strictly by mail order within punk magazines. You would send in a check for 550 British pounds, tell them what print you wanted, and it would come back this way. I'm very interested in objects and places that feel like they have a soul. There's an ancient Mesopotamian belief that physical objects can invite an external presence from a soul into it, and I'm very into pieces that I believe conjure that. I think fashion is exactly that. I wonder who owned it before me. This top just feels like pure punk lives in it. There was no mass dissemination of counterculture the way we have now. Whoever had this found it for a reason, and I'm sure it's lived 100 lives before it got to me, and I like to think about the souls that inhabit it. This isn’t a piece you stumble upon by accident. It makes my heart stop anytime someone rents it out.

Max Feldmann: My dad used to run record stores back in Arizona before I was even born, so I always had vintage T-shirts growing up. It started to click when people started asking me how much my shirts were. When my mom was in town she’d asked me to go with her to an archive store, and I saw pieces and silhouettes that I was not seeing anymore being created. The authenticity behind some of the old Comme des Garçons, Margiela — it spoke to me in a different way. It’s a better way to dress. I started getting into Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto and Number (N)ine. It just opened me up to this world. I was a men's buyer for six years and worked at so many different retail stores, and I'd never seen silhouettes like that. They were just so bespoke. When everything's one of one, but that one thing fits perfectly, there's no better feeling in the world.

When we got a new consigner, I was really excited, because I had seen these karate pants before in other fabrications, but I never saw them in this snakeskin. These were worn on the runway — Spring/Summer 2001 Gucci by Tom Ford. I just love the shape, the silhouette and the construction. And it has a wrap tie. Men never wear wrap ties. It's so versatile and could fit anywhere from like a size 30 to a size 36.

Marquise Miller of Millersoom: Vintage Carhartt Pants

Vintage clothes were my entry point into fashion. I'm obsessed with “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Coal Miner's Daughter,” “A Different World” and “Kids” with Rosario Dawson and Chloë Sevigny. I loved these styles so much, I was like, "I'm going to figure out a way to make a world out of it."

Millersroom is a convenience store. It's a vintage convenience store where you have your books, you have your records, you have your Picasso book. You also have your Levi's. You have your reconstructed party dress. But then again, you have a distressed jacket with your blazer.

Marquise Miller

People who shop at the store always want a good pair of jeans, and I try to tell them that it's not about Levi’s jeans. It's about the best jeans that hold up. It could be a Dickies. It could be a Carhartt. It could be an old pair of Walmart Rustler jeans. You just need a good pair of denim that sustains and will look chic with whatever loafers.

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I feel the most successful when I wear these Carhartt pants. They've been through it, but they’re still here, heavy and great. There's so much character in the stray paint strokes, the blackened thighs. I need to feel like I know what I'm doing, and they help me feel more assertive and in alignment. I feel assertive when I feel aligned. They're my superpower pants.

I love that I can change the world with my vision through fashion. What I say goes. I go out and source new old clothes, and I feel good. When I’m styling, I love when I'm able to bring something from here and mix it in with all the fabulous designer clothes, and my clients gravitate to my piece. That's my favorite. That's when I was like, I'm really doing my big one because that brings something that I know they're not gonna be able to find anywhere else.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.