The One That Got Away

2000s Vivienne Westwood runway look.

Every collector has a story about the one that got away.

Mine lived briefly on a rack in a now closed Goodwill store on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens sometime in the mid-2000s.

Back then, I had heard rumors about this particular location. Vintage shoppers whispered about it like a secret fishing hole. If you knew where to look and got there early enough, treasures surfaced. So one morning I made the trip.

I don't remember everything I bought that day. In fact, I couldn't tell you a single item that came home with me. But I can describe the one I left behind. It wasn't hanging openly on the rack. Someone had hidden it.

Experienced thrift shoppers know the trick. A promising find gets tucked between garments in the men's section or buried deep within a crowded rack until its discoverer can return with more cash. It's the closest thing the thrift store world has to burying treasure.

Normally I would have admired the ingenuity. But on that day I was the pirate. I found the stash!

There were several pieces hidden together, but one stood apart from the others. It was a European designer mini skirt unlike anything I had seen before. Beautifully made. Fashion-forward. The kind of piece that seemed straight from the runway.

I pulled it out and walked around the store with it draped over my arm. And then I made a mistake.

I put it back.

At the time, I justified the decision. The skirt looked impossibly small, probably a size 0. I couldn't wear it. I wasn't buying for a collection. I wasn't even really a vintage dealer yet. I was simply a shopper who liked unusual clothes.

So back onto the rack it went. I have no idea who bought it. I have no idea where it ended up. What I do know is that I've thought about that skirt for nearly twenty years.

The funny thing is that if I found it today, I would buy it without hesitation. Not because it would fit. Not because I planned to wear it. But because somewhere along the way I became a collector.

Collectors understand that certain objects are worth preserving even when they serve no practical purpose. They become markers of a moment, examples of extraordinary design, pieces of fashion history. That skirt would have gone straight into the archive.

The older I get, the more I realize that collecting isn't really about ownership. It's about recognition. Seeing something special and understanding its significance before it disappears.

Ironically, I've sold plenty of remarkable things over the years that I wish I had kept. Sometimes I'll scroll through my sold listings and feel a small pang of regret. Not because I should've charged more, but because those pieces are gone from my orbit forever.

Still, none of them haunt me quite like the skirt in Queens. Perhaps that's because it wasn't simply a garment. It was the moment before I learned how to trust my eye. It was the first thing that taught me the difference between shopping and collecting.