Visit almost any city in America, and you’ll find that vintage clothing stores are among the hottest shopping destinations in town for people looking to the past for a perfect fashion find. The used clothing market is an over $40 billion business, with secondhand sales increasing 11 percent in 2023 from the year before, according to The New York Times. But you may not know that one of the OGs of vintage fashion, whose impressive collection of men’s and women’s pieces inspired some of the hottest designers and has been featured in over 50 movies, was a Black man – Boston native, Bobby Garnett.
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In a 2013 interview with GBH News, Garnett said his love of fashion was born out of his love of music, as he tried to copy the style of his favorite artists during the 1960s. He started buying old clothing pieces he found just for the buttons, which he used in his Boston leather shop. Garnett put the buttonless shirts and jackets in a basket inside the store, which, to his surprise, became popular with his customers.
“[The] basket was always empty, and people would constantly ask us, ‘When you gonna put more stuff in the basket? ‘” he said.
After years of shopping, Garnett had accumulated a massive collection of jackets, dresses, jeans, military apparel and more. He eventually turned his personal collection into a showroom, opening Bobby from Boston in the city’s vibrant South End neighborhood and a warehouse outside of Boston in Lynn, Massachusetts. Before long, Garnett’s collection became a destination for vintage clothing lovers, Hollywood costume designers looking to get their actors into character, and fashion designers like Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, and Ralph Lauren who used his vintage pieces as inspiration for his ivy league-influenced collection.
“I have the highest admiration for Ralph. He’s kept a lot of vintage people in business over the years,” he said in an interview. “I guess he was the prominent person in my mind, a designer, that just loves vintage.”
When Garnett passed away in 2016, his daughter, Jessica Garnett Carrion, took over the business, maintaining her father’s high-quality collection which was truly a labor of love.
“I have a knack for really digging stuff up. I can find stuff,” he said in a 2013 interview. “There’s a rush finding one great item or being able to find 500 items that I can just use, either way, I’m going to dig and pick until I pass out.”
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