Fellow fashion scavengers, brace yourselves: Blackbook recently profiled Trans-Americas Trading Co, a monolithic vintage supplier in Clifton, New Jersey, receives 70,000 pounds of clothing ... every single day. Which, by our calculations, equates to roughly fifty pieces per minute..
Of Trans-Americas' daily 70,000 pounds -- all of which are all cast-offs from the 2.5 billion pounds of clothing Americans donate to charity each year -- only 1 percent ever make it into stores we know and love. Buyers from the city's ritziest vintage shops make special trips to peruse goods organized into intriguing micro-categories like "fisherman/folkloric," "patterned '80s," and even "special costumes," which includes discarded pieces from the Metropolitan Opera.
The sheer scale of the place makes it likely better imagined as a day trip with friends than a simple afternoon shopping jaunt, as we suspect their "spring shipment," as it were, might be a little more gargantuan than we're accustomed to. Get directions at Trans-Americas' website, www.tranclo.com.
