There's much more to vintage than a classic box of '98 Franzia. With that in mind, today's Groupon swaddles your future in the threads of history. For $10, you get $20 worth of vintage clothes and more at The Garment District. Located in Kendall Square near MIT, this eccentrically stuffed warehouse stocks its floors with vintage wear, discounted contemporary clothing, shoes, accessories, and enough costumes to dominate all future theme parties.
Founded in 1986, The Garment District is an unconventional department store that operates alongside space-sharers Boston Costume and Dollar-A-Pound+, which your Groupon is also good at. Spend a few hours dancing through the massive two-floor, 28,000-square-foot former textile building, and find the perfect shades for your music video on the wall of sunglasses. Defy the staunch chronological segregation of the decades by combining leg warmers, poodle skirts, and Zubaz in one unholy alliance. With an eccentrically decorated interior, The Garment District organizes its wares by color, making life easy on shoppers with an ensemble already in mind. For those who prefer the chaos and serendipity of bin rummaging, the downstairs Dollar-A-Pound+ (actually $1.50 per pound) offers the thrill of the hunt.
This Cambridge clothing mecca works in many ways to bulk up its eclectic 40,000-plus selection of duds—the store buys, trades, and sells items from customers as a consignment shop, and offers new clothes sourced from overstock. The Garment District takes a sustainable approach to clothing recycling, making sure all the accoutrements it receives go either on the floor for purchase, to developing countries, or to mills for textile-recycling purposes. At Dollar-A-Pound+, you can expect to bring in your Groupon and leave with a hefty assortment of items.
You will not find any real fur at The Garment District.
Reviews
Readers of the Boston Phoenix voted The Garment District as Best Vintage Clothing Store for 2009](http://thephoenix.com/thebest/boston/2009/shopping/vintageclothingstore/) The store has also been featured in the _Boston Globe. Over 220 Yelpers give them a 3.5 star average.
- A visit to Kendall Square’s spacious mecca of vintage delights, The Garment District, can be the makings of a relaxing afternoon of pawing through ’60s-era dresses, weeding through piles of paper-thin T-shirts, perusing the selection of vintage coats, and ambling among the selection of patterned tights and bins of silk scarves. – Boston Phoenix
- the upstairs room with vintage clothes organized by decade is a dream come true. – Caitlin v.,Yelp
The Garment District
Beginning as an offshoot of Cambridge's historic textile industry and a complement to the inventive business model of By The Pound, The Garment District continues combining a repertoire of hip, quirky clothing with eco-friendly practices of recycling and consignment. The hard-working staff of 40 intercepts gently used fashions and unworn apparel before it can be carelessly thrown away or wasted on stylish scarecrows. More than 40,000 wearables don men, women, and children in modish displays of vintage, contemporary, and designer clothing, drawing in hats, dresses, shoes, and accessories from sources across the country to keep the racks stocked with millions of pounds of clothing throughout the year. Thread handlers sort through collected duds, hanging the stylishly suited on racks, sending overstock clothing to developing countries, and shipping soiled or torn clothing to a shoddy mill, where it is ground up and sent as threats to fashion designers.
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