Vintage Oak Lawn

The Dallas neighborhood of Oak Lawn is one of the best places in the city to find Vintage.

Our first stop was Couture Consignment at the intersection of Oak Lawn Ave and Dickason Ave. Unlike most of the vintage clothing shops I have been in, every piece of clothes is marked with its size so that you don’t have to play the put-it-on-to-guess-its-size game. There is  even quite a large selection for those harder-to-find sizes such as 36S or 46L. And you will be smiling if you fit in between.

It is not strictly a vintage store, but a high-end consignment-clothing store. Brand names such as Neiman Marcus, Clien Kelvin or Etro fill those racks. If the price tags seem somewhat intimidating, then take some relief that there may be some ongoing sale. On the day we visited, any clothes with a price tag ends with 9 or 8 were 50 percent off. Frequent shoppers know where to look for new stuff, which are usually displayed in the front.

Our next stop was just a few blocks away. Gratitude is situated in a house built on a slope on Fairmont Street. Our visit marked the new owner’s seventh week anniversary of the store. It is still cash-only, but the owner promised to get credit card transaction up and running. If this is your first visit like ours, you would not be able to guess what you will see when working your way up those steps. But it is a true vintage gem.

True it is stuffed, so that you have to watch when you walk around not to bump some boxes; but when you look there are always some amazing find! Sizes are usually not marked nor are those jackets sorted by lengths. And they are packed super tight that you need pull out to have a complete look. But what a fun experience to explore those racks! Those 60’s skinny-lapeled sport coats (so popular in the Mad Men series) are packed with those fat-lapel 80’s jackets. You begin to chuckle when thinking what if two fashion-savvy crowds from these two decades bumping against each other. And here comes a purple bowling jacket- although you probably need a deep cleaning. Besides clothing, other vintage goods are everywhere including 60’s and 70’s records, jewels, diamond and pins. We saw a faux-diamond lady’s pin for Nixon Campaign. Nixon was a highly regarded American president in China- maybe the pin will find a new home there (so we'll have one less reminder here).