Sales of vintage children's clothing are experiencing a notable boom in in-person and online markets, where prices for children's clothing have skyrocketed on websites such as Depop and Poshmark. Millennial parents are looking to dress their children in the clothes and movie and television characters they loved (or coveted) as children.
The result? There is a new generation of kids who go to the playground looking incredibly cool. Take Amari Case, a Southern California girl who spent a Sunday afternoon this spring wandering through a vintage market in a West Hollywood warehouse dressed in baggy jeans and a '90s-era T-shirt emblazoned with the “Dragon Ball Z” character Son Goku.
When she wasn't doodling on a Lorax coloring sheet, she had been strolling through the market with her father, Aaron Muñoz Case, shopping for new pieces destined to make her the flyest little girl on the preschool playground.
Neil Wright, from left, Kristine Nite Scalzo and Brandon Rosenblatt, co-founders of Elemeno Kids Vintage Market.
Showing off Amari's new vintage satin LA Raiders jacket and Grant Hill's tiny teal Detroit Pistons jersey, Muñoz Case, who was also impeccably dressed, noted that while Amari went through a phase around 18 months where she wanted to dress herself, she eventually gave up and went back to letting her frazzled father dictate her wardrobe.
Muñoz Case found Amari's first vintage piece at the Rose Bowl Flea Market and caught the bug, returning every month to buy something to add to her little one's wardrobe.
Trend finders and researchers They say that Muñoz Case is not alone in his search. The market for vintage children's clothing has heated up dramatically in recent years, perhaps reaching a boiling point in January, when A 90s Eeyore onesie sold for over $3,000 on EBay. (It was new with tags, but a without tags still It sold for almost a thousand dollars about a month later.)
The thirst for little souvenirs is so popular that the first children's market, Elemeno, named after the “LMNO” part of “The Alphabet Song” and where Amari was playing and shopping, attracted 17 vendors and more than 2,000 attendees during a single weekend in March. (There are plans for another Elemeno Kids Vintage Market pop-up later this year in New York, as well as plans to bring the event back to Los Angeles sometime next year.)
1. Cameron Scalzo, wearing a vintage McDonald's t-shirt from the 90s, and his mom Kristine Nite Scalzo. 2. Cameron Scalzo wears an Avirex jacket from the 90s.
Eye Speak Vintage's Kristine Nite Scalzo, who co-organized the event and will open a children's vintage store in Pasadena this month, says she fell under the children's vintage spell in 2020 when she was pregnant with her son. I had always been a vintage shopper, so I knew I wanted to pass that passion on to the next generation. He began filling his son's closet and soon found himself selling his other finds from a warehouse in his garage.
Now she has an appointment-only space in Pasadena, where she attracts everyone from Rihanna's stylist to out-of-town moms stopping by on their way to Disneyland. “The community around children's vintage has really exploded on Instagram over the last six years,” says Scalzo. “We want to know who we're buying from. We want to know if we're doing well buying second-hand clothes. And it's a hobby for people that can turn into a potential side business. Because knowing that there's a large group interested in vintage children's clothing, you can always pass on an item.” [your kid outgrows] to another person or resell it.”
Scalzo says some parents are searching through Goodwill Outlet bins for the perfect piece, while others are content to pay for, say, a '90s Simpsons T-shirt or a mini-sized Harley-Davidson jacket. Checking the shelves at Elemeno Market, most pieces cost between $15 and $40, although there were special pieces set aside at some stalls with price tags that might make parents' eyes stand out. (Think $275 for a set of distressed Spider-Man jumpsuits from the 2000s or $150 for a pair of Cross Colors jean shorts from the 90s.)
In both the harvest for children and adults, perfect condition is highly valued. No matter what era they grew up in, children tend to be messy. They get strawberry juice on their shirts or scrape their knees on their Bugle Boy jeans. Clean-looking vintage children's clothing is more expensive, and while simple children's clothing sells, items with cool characters or prints tend to attract more attention and money.
Brandon Rosenblatt, another of Elemeno's organizers, says he's had his eye on a specific “Back to the Future” children's T-shirt for some time, but notes that it typically sells for about $1,000. He is partial to McKids Clothing for his daughter, from the short-lived McDonald's children's clothing brand, noting that he even bought her a vintage McDonald's-themed official aloha T-shirt from Hawaii, something he says he's never seen anywhere else.
1. Brothers Amora and Milo Castilo wear vintage cowboy hats, jackets and chaps. 2. Thalía Castilo and her children Amora and Milo.
Other collectors, he says, might be a little less obscure, leaning toward conventional characters like Strawberry Shortcake or properties from the '80s and '90s, like “The Land Before Time” and “Rugrats.”
“A lot of millennials are having kids, like everyone in their 30s and 40s, and they all want to put their kids on the same IP they grew up on,” Rosenblatt says.
“It's the thrill of the hunt that gets everyone excited,” Scalzo says. “Once you find that perfect nostalgic piece, you think 'Holy crap' and you just want to chase that feeling over and over again.”
Mia De La Rosa, a reseller who was at the Elemeno market, says that like Scalzo, she started buying vintage children's clothing when she was pregnant with her daughter, Liv, who is now 6, loves everything on PBS Kids and has a closet full of secondhand vintage clothing covered in characters like DW, the annoying little sister from the '90s show “Arthur.”
Everything Liv wears is “completely her style,” De La Rosa says. “She dresses herself every day and gets compliments on what she wears to school all the time.”
Other children who wear vintage clothing, and particularly younger ones, might simply be sporting what their parents like or they might just like the look of the t-shirt even if they don't know what it advertises. (An 8-year-old boy at the Elemeno market, for example, chose to wear a crisp T-shirt that highlighted the 1990s Jim Carrey film “The Mask” because it featured his favorite color: green.)
Derrick Broaster, a full-time vintage enthusiast resellerHe says that while he chooses to dress in clothes from the '60s and '70s, he dresses his two children in clothes from the '00s. (“How Bow Wow dressed when he was a kid,” he says.)
Although his youngest son tends to rebel against Broaster's vintage selections, opting for any Spider-Man shoe in sight, his oldest son has leaned in and let his dad advise him on which vintage pieces might work and which ones would be the most stylish.
1. Julián, left, and Javier Gutiérrez show off their vintage clothes. Javier says his mom always tells him to keep his old suits clean. 2. Mom Priscilla Guzmán, clockwise, dad Javier Gutiérrez and their sons Julián and Javier Gutiérrez enjoy the atmosphere of vintage clothing. Guzmán says she has been buying and selling vintage children's items since her oldest son was born eight years ago.
Rosenblatt says a good portion of the antique finds he sees on the market now have returned to the U.S. from places in Central, South America or Asia where those pieces were likely shipped decades ago after they were donated or given away.
“There is a real vulnerability to this classic game with rag houses “Get access to bulk products overseas and allow people to select them,” he says. “Now there are companies that destroy 20, 30 or 40,000 pieces of vintage clothing a week. It's a really interesting ecosystem.”
For many children's vintage sellers, finding their stock is as fun and interesting as returning it to the hands of consumers. “Wherever we can find clothes, we're there,” says Matthew Carlos, owner of Youth long gone. She started selling vintage clothing 11 years ago when she was 15, transitioned to selling vintage children's clothing in her 20s, and has spent the last six years scouring flea markets, websites, and swap meets.
“The children's market is definitely growing,” he says, “but I still feel like we haven't even gotten to where we can go. It's becoming popular now, but the more events [like Elemeno] The more we can do, the more mainstream it will become.” Even now, some major brands like Gap and OshKosh B'gosh have recognized interest in some of their '80s and '90s styles, moving on to relaunch the glances in limited runs.
Jackie and Frank Oropeza with their daughter Rumi Mae shop at Elemeno Kids Vintage Market.
Children's resale is also leaning towards streetwear culture. Rosenblatt, who worked in the streetwear industry, says he's noticed that a good portion of those interested in children's vintage (particularly male shoppers) tend to be fans of streetwear brands like Supreme, Fear of God Essentials and Bape. At Elemeno, for example, a good portion of the parents we saw pushing strollers were well-dressed dads who were apparently on solo missions, something you don't always see at kid-focused events.
“I just want my son to feel like I did when I was a kid,” said Justin Nguyen, as he watched his little boy, Jayden, play with bubbles. “I want him to be happy, carefree and cheerful, and I want to be able to spend time with him. My mom and dad were always working, even on the weekends. Now that I'm a dad, taking my son on the weekends to do things like this seems like a blessing.”
