So this is going to sound totally random, but my whole relationship with vintage fashion just got turned upside down because of a leaky roof. I know that makes zero sense, but stay with me.
Last month my dad calls me in full panic mode because there’s water dripping through their attic and my mom is basically having a breakdown about all the stuff stored up there. You know how parents are – they keep everything “just in case” and then twenty years later it’s this overwhelming mess of Christmas decorations and old tax documents that nobody wants to deal with. Anyway, I drive over expecting to spend my Sunday hauling down soggy boxes of random junk, which honestly was not how I wanted to spend my weekend off.
Three hours in, I’m covered in dust and my mom’s living room looks like a tornado hit it, when I find this leather suitcase way back in the corner. It’s one of those old-school ones with brass clasps that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget when it was new. The thing that caught my attention was the label – written in my grandma’s careful handwriting, it said “Margaret’s clothes – good ones.”
Now, I loved my grandma, but fashion icon she was not. At least not the grandma I knew. She was all about sensible cardigans and those polyester pants that never wrinkled. The kind of woman who thought my ripped jeans were evidence of moral decay. So I’m expecting to find maybe some nice church dresses or whatever.
I open this case and I literally gasped out loud. I’m talking proper vintage Mary Quant pieces, people. A color-blocked mini dress that looked like it walked straight out of a Twiggy photoshoot. A houndstooth skirt and jacket set that screamed Carnaby Street. White go-go boots that were so perfectly sixties I couldn’t believe they were real.
My mom comes over to see what I’m freaking out about, and when she sees the dress I’m holding up, she gets this weird look on her face. Turns out my boring grandma had this whole secret life in 1960s London that nobody ever talked about. She worked as a secretary, shared a flat in Earl’s Court, spent her weekends shopping on King’s Road. She was basically living the Swinging Sixties dream while saving up her secretarial salary for these incredible pieces.
The craziest part? She kept everything. After she married my grandpa and moved back north and became the conventional grandmother I knew, she packed all these clothes away but couldn’t bear to get rid of them. There’s something so heartbreaking and beautiful about that – this young woman who’d been part of this incredible cultural moment, and even decades later she couldn’t let go of the clothes that represented that freedom.
I mean, we’re talking actual Mary Quant here. Not inspired-by or vintage-style, but pieces from the Bazaar on King’s Road when it was THE place to shop if you were young and trendy in London. The labels are still perfect, the construction is incredible, and most of the pieces are in amazing condition considering they’re over fifty years old.
Of course, my first instinct was to preserve everything like it belonged in a museum. I did all the research on proper vintage storage, bought the acid-free tissue paper, the whole nine yards. But then I realized that’s kind of missing the point, you know? These clothes were meant to be revolutionary, to be worn by young women who were breaking rules and having adventures. Treating them like precious artifacts would be doing a disservice to their whole original spirit.
So I started actually wearing them. Obviously I was terrified the first time – what if I spilled something on a piece of fashion history? But the houndstooth skirt fit me perfectly, and when I paired it with an oversized black sweater and ankle boots instead of the full matching sixties look, it worked. It didn’t look like I was playing dress-up or going to a themed party. It looked intentional and modern and cool.
The reactions I got were insane. Fashion people immediately recognized the quality and the label, but even my non-fashion friends could tell there was something special about the pieces. There’s just this craftsmanship and attention to detail that you don’t get anymore, especially not at prices normal people can afford.
The color-blocked dress was trickier because it’s so obviously from a specific era – there’s no mistaking that silhouette for anything else. But I found that if I leaned into that rather than trying to hide it, it worked even better. I wore it with chunky platform boots and an oversized leather jacket to this fashion industry party, and at least five people asked if it was from some designer’s archive collection. When I told them it was my grandma’s, the conversations got so much more interesting.
What really gets me is thinking about my grandma as this young woman taking fashion risks, spending money she probably couldn’t afford on these boundary-pushing designs. The woman I knew would have been horrified by half the outfits I wear to work, but before she was that person, she was someone who understood that clothes could be armor and joy and rebellion all at once.
I’ve been posting the outfits on Instagram with little stories about grandma’s London years, and people are so into it. Not just because vintage Mary Quant is objectively cool, but because there’s something universal about discovering these hidden aspects of the people who came before us. How many of our grandparents had whole other lives before they became the people we knew?
Not everything was wearable – the white go-go boots are gorgeous but way too small for my definitely-not-1960s-sized feet, and one dress had a tear that’s too delicate to fix properly. But even the pieces I can’t wear are special. They sit on my bookshelf as reminders of this whole other side of my family history that I never knew existed.
The yellow plastic raincoat is probably my favorite piece to style because it’s so challenging. Transparent plastic isn’t exactly practical or flattering under normal circumstances, but worn open over a simple black dress, it becomes this incredible statement piece. It’s the kind of thing that could walk down a runway today and look completely contemporary.
My mom ended up trying on the pieces that fit her, including those white boots that are apparently exactly her size. Watching her pose in her mother’s clothes, laughing as she tried to walk in those impossible heels, was this incredible moment of seeing three generations connected through fashion. My quiet, practical mother channeling this young, daring woman she’d never really known.
The whole experience has changed how I think about vintage fashion. Too often it gets treated as either costume party material or museum pieces too precious to actually wear. But the best vintage styling happens when you find that balance between respecting the original design and making it relevant to your actual life right now. It’s not about disguising the age of a piece but creating this conversation between past and present.
Mary Quant’s designs were revolutionary because they rejected all that formal, restrictive fashion that came before in favor of youth and freedom and playfulness. Wearing them with too much reverence actually goes against their original spirit. The modern equivalent of how these pieces would have been worn when they were new is to style them with that same sense of experimentation and irreverence.
I think about the clothes in my closet now and wonder which ones might end up in a box somewhere, discovered by some future granddaughter who never knew me when I was young and broke and trying to figure out how to look cool on a Portland designer’s salary. I hope she wears them well, and I hope they tell her something about who I was beyond whatever conventional person I might become.
The leak in my parents’ attic was annoying and expensive and created this huge mess we’re still dealing with. But it also gave me this incredible gift – not just beautiful clothes that happen to be worth a decent amount of money, but a whole new understanding of my grandmother as someone who was once young and daring and part of something bigger than herself. Every time I wear one of her pieces, I’m not just wearing vintage fashion, I’m wearing a piece of her story, and somehow that makes me feel braver in my own life. Even if that life currently involves figuring out how to afford rent while looking like I have my fashion game together, which honestly isn’t that different from what she was doing all those years ago in London.
Madison’s a Portland-based designer who treats thrift stores like treasure hunts. She writes about dressing well on a real salary—think smart buys, affordable finds, and brutal honesty about what’s worth it. Stylish, broke, and proud of it.
