Flip Mode VIntage
Vendor
Products
About
Flip Mode Vintage is a 2nd hand clothing shop dedicated to rescuing and reviving as many beautiful, but sometimes ugly, vintage but sometimes new, nostalgic, high quality articles of clothing from the 32B garments that end up in our landfills each year.
Location
Tampa, FL
Manager
I’ve been digging my whole life. I bought my first set of turntables in the 90s and I’ll never forget the feeling of finding my first Run DMC record in nearly mint condition at a thrift store. The more I dug for tracks to play at my gigs the more I noticed all of the 2nd hand gems from the eras I had been djing. Finding gems or “bangers” hasn’t always been easy even though there are plenty out there. In fact 208M lbs of waste are generated by single use outfits, curation on the other hand, was the tricky part. With the combination of a trained eye and being in the right place at the right time digging became an art form much like rocking a party did.
The breaking point came when I was lined up in an warehouse AKA "the trenches". This is the final stop for items before they are disposed. There are multiple rounds of large bins pulled out daily. Prior to pulling out more the staff gives one last call for the old ones before they are wheeled away to be destroyed. As clothes would get pulled away I would think about saving one more. Reaching in to grab one more became two more and so on.
I stayed awake most nights thinking about the piles of items thrown away and what I could do to save more. I wondered how long we could extend the life-cycle of items? How much could we possibly keep producing, tossing, and buying new, and what is the long term impact? What if we all started buying mostly 2nd hand, passed it on and kept the cycle going instead?
If everyone bought one used item instead of new this year it would save 449m lbs of waste, 25b gallons of water, and 66m trees.
Flip Mode Vintage has given me an outlet to reach for one more and I invite you to join the Thrift Mode Squad to reach for many more. The mission: to 2nd-handedly save the planet and have lots of fun along the way. Check in for news on upcoming partnerships, events, and our Facebook and Instagram page with sale items. Thank you for joining us!
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