About Red Vintage Co.
When Nina Collins was in sixth grade, her mother routinely dropped her off at a giant thrift store outside LA with her brothers, two of them her triplet siblings, all gingers. They got around $4 a piece to supplement their wardrobes. “Pretty much everything was 25 cents,” says Nina.
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A few decades passed, couture made its way to her closet, but vintage held strong. Then, in 2019, while she and her brother Charlie were road-tripping from Santa Fe to LA, the idea of Red Vintage was hatched. It was somewhere between Needles and Barstow as far as either can remember.Â
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With an eye for authenticity and kitsch, quality and cool, Nina personally selects every piece of Red Vintage inventory from a carefully cultivated network of sources. Yes, she knows about fabric content and how 50-50 poly-cotton drapes differently than pure cotton, and which brands began manufacturing in far-off lands when. But she chooses clothes as much for their personal stories as their retail bona fides—about 90% of the RV collection is US-made.
“I’m drawn to the good, the bad, the ugly and the absurd,” she says. “The more stains the better. I love the history of the wear and tear, imagining what the rocker tee or fringed jacket or torn jeans went through before I found them. If something’s really beaten up, it was probably well-loved. I want to find it a forever home!”Â
The same sentiment led Nina to adopt Mike (in Retirement), her senior terrier and warehouse muse (a child’s XS tee gives Mike a bespoke fit) and bring Tony, her carrot (and carrot-top) loving Oldenburg horse into the fold. Outside the warehouse and the ring, Nina teaches Ashtanga, which she’s practiced for fifteen years. She hopes someday to find a mechanic who can get her 1965 Cushman Truckster, an auction find, back on the road.Â