The vintage clothing market has been steadily growing for years but has seen record prices in recent times.
The original tale of student turned entrepreneur, with a hugely successful clothes shop straight from his dorm room, was Stanley DeSantis. Whilst studying at NYU’s prestigious film school in the 70s, he began selling his own printed T-shirts with unique pictures of everyone’s favourite characters. One of his first designs showed the Wicket Witch from the classic Wizard of Oz movie spelling out the words “Surrender Dorothy” in the air using the back of her broomstick.
The shirts were a huge hit and word soon spread of DeSantis’ designs. They became so popular that he was eventually able to pay of his entire college tuition with the money he made from them. Pretty cool considering he did it without the help of any advertising or social media, which play such a huge role in the success of most small businesses today.
It wasn’t long before he was recognised as one of the biggest names in the novelty tee industry, one that has certainly boomed since DeSantis helped it to develop. He spoke to the Los Angeles Times in 1994 about how “At the time, they were sold in truck stops, or as fashion tees, but I melded the funny T-shirts into a fashion statement. Before, T-shirts like that were never sold in department stores.” This is crazy to imagine now, considering it’s pretty hard to step foot into a department store without seeing at least one t-shirt with your favourite character, usually accompanied by a moderately funny pun.
He also recalled that when attempting to sell his designs to Bloomingdales, they responded by telling him that “‘T-shirts are over”, and that he “couldn’t put a thing on a T-shirt that we would ever buy”. It seems they really missed the mark on that one.
By 1994, DeSantis was generating upwards of $18 million a year, which is about $31.5 million in today’s economy. That’s impressive.
Fast forward to the present day, and we have Corbin Smith, a 27-year-old who loves collecting vintage tees, attempting to sell a rare DeSantis design during The Virtual Flea’s live-streamed auction. The Aladdin shirt, featuring a huge print of the bright blue Genie, opened up for bidding at $1.
Smith was silently optimistic about the shirt, knowing enough about the market of vintage clothing and what a sought after piece it was, but he had no idea just quite how sought after.
He told online magazine VICE that had hoped it would sell for around $2000, but claimed he had thought this in itself was ‘wishful thinking’. You can imagine his surprise when, live on the virtual auction, the bidding made its way up to a whopping $6000. Even better, Smith had purchased the top for only $500 earlier this year.
As the 90s babies are entering adulthood, the market for nostalgic merchandise from cartoons and games of the era was always going to grow, but few people expected it to boom in the way that it has. It isn’t often that traders and collectors get as lucky as to make that much of a profit in one sale, but Corbin Smith is evidence that it can happen, and it’s pretty great when it does.
The world of fashion is constantly changing, but check out another crazy new trend from IKEA here…
Featured image via Instagram/ @wycovintage
