As couples across the city slept off Valentine’s Day, 80 small business vendors from across New England shuffled a curation of vintage and up-cycled clothing into Artist’s For Humanity for Found Boston’s second-anniversary market.

Rob Singh, co-founder and creative director of Found, describes the organization as a “hardcore-fashion, vintage, sustainable market.” 

Singh has worked in fashion for the past 20 years. On top of his work at Found, he has contributed to Fenway Flea and Original Markets. As creative director, he curates the overall selection of Found’s two locations. “The first store is very Americana, very high end, very designer, very upper end of streetwear. And the second store is kind of more accessible contemporary pieces,” he said. 

“We started off about two years ago with our first market, which had about 700 people, and then I think three or four months later, we did an event at Artists For Humanity, which had about, I think, 3000 people, but people waited three and a half hours in a pouring thunderstorm to come in,” said Singh.

“They lined up from CRISPR all the way around the corner past the Channel Center Garage,” recounted AFH Director of Business Development Richard Frank. “People just stood out there and waited because they didn’t want to leave the spot.” 

“There’s something in this vintage culture that’s really speaking to people,” said Frank. “they’re not trying to, you know, be Amazon. They’re just trying to find a way a good exchange with people.”

The different vendors had racks upon racks of vintage, designer, and upcycled clothes in every form or fit you could imagine. Old Carhartt jackets; a Harley Davidson tank top with a dragon emblazoned on its front; a $4 bin that, while not exclusively women’s undergarments, did contain lots of women’s undergarments – plus Transformers graphic tee. There was truly something for everyone.

Matt Karlin had come to Boston from his studio in Lawrence, where he and two other vintage dealers split three rooms in an old mill. “We do basically appointment buying where people who want to shop our spot can come by… And, see a bunch of cool clothes.” Many of Karlin’s customers are vintage dealers themselves who come to buy merchandise for their own stores.

Karlin described his goods as mostly his personal taste. “I try to stock a mixture of specialty old vintage stuff and more, just modern, wearable stuff. It can be anything,” he said.

Anything, in this context, includes a pair of pants where the sizes of the legs significantly dwarf that of the waist. 

The pants actually belonged to his buddy, Nick Chenette of Lucky Finds in Manchester, NH. The duo claimed they were “essentially just the baggiest pair of pants you could possibly own” and that they could fit into each leg hole and wear them together. 

In a cossack hat and camo pants, Kiara de los Santos’ aesthetic was as eclectic as the pieces she had for sale. “At Jetsetter Vintage, everything has a story to it,” she said.

“My mom used to be a home healthcare worker, and growing up, we would live with her clients, so they became family and I would say she treated them with the dignity that’s hard to find in healthcare nowadays. Whenever they would pass, they would will us everything, like all the clutter… and we really cared about them, so we didn’t want to see it just go to Goodwill”

“I started this as a way to, like, pass on their memory and be able to get cool things into people’s hands that have a meaning and a story behind it,” she explained.

And stories her merchandise had. David Bowie shirts that had come straight from his 1970s concerts, a dress that was at one point a curtain, and de los Santos favorite piece on display, a flapper gown that belonged to a Californian oil heiress named Elise.

De los Santos started vending to help pay for college during COVID-19. “I, like, lost my job, so I really just started learning about the stories and passing on their memories,” she said.

West Bridgewater’s Madison Curpenski brought a more colorful selection of late-90’s early-00 wear. “Really fun and flirty,” she described it.

“Everything comes back around. When you walk through Urban Outfitters or Free People right now, it’s all like, Y2k [and] 90’s stuff,” she said. “I kind of look for what is trending now, but like, how I can find that second hand to reduce waste.”

Her store, Sol-Mates Shop, is run through her Instagram. She said her inventory is kept across every inch of her home. “I try to contain it, but it ends up sprawling the whole apartment,” an experience shared by many vendors to whom vintage serves as a side income. 

Curpenski finds vintage to be a fun side hustle. “I get to find cool things, and then other people get to buy them and love them,” she said.

Singh credits much of Found’s success to his Gen Z staff. “Fashion is a young man’s young person’s game. So all these young kids, they’ve kind of bought their own little elements and their own little touch and add it to the value of Found”

While in previous years Found has held more than 50 events, mostly gathered around the summertime, going into year three Singh plans to do 12 to 14 markets at a much larger scale. On top of the daily brick-and-mortar business at 5 Columbia St, Cambridge, Found will be hosting a second event at AFH on March 8 from 11AM to 5PM.

 Tickets are available here. 

Vendors can book a spot here.

Main image by Kay Bailey