By Amanda Julius
A few months back, Brooklynite Genevieve Belleveau was walking down the street in an elaborately beaded dress when a woman approached her. “Your dress is beautiful, never get rid of it, never take it off,” the woman said. “After that it obviously had to go,” said Belleveau on a recent morning, as she handed the dress across the counter at Williamsburgs’s illustrious vintage clothing store—and temple of apathy—Beacon’s Closet.
The store, a staple of Brooklyn thrift shopping and posturing since 1997, buys and then resells choice pieces of clothing—a pea-green wide-legged 1970s jumpsuit here, a red sequined bridesmaid dress there—from anyone who cares to bring it in to their trading room. Expecting to bump into lines of locals holding up their mothers’ wedding dresses and great-grandfathers’ top hats, I spent the morning at Beacon’s Closet interviewing those selling their clothes—and, by extension, the history behind them—to the store.
Belleveau, today sporting patterned lycra cycling shorts and pink lipstick, was there to sell her entire wardrobe, with the exception of the clothes on her back. She drives an ice-cream truck and wears bright clothing to attract business, so the selection she brought to Beacon’s Closet was eclectic and eye-catching. The store snapped most of it up—a rarity for a horde this big, the shop assistant told her. Belleveau said she had a new style objective: “everything in beige, so I look naked, with giant bright accessories. Selling everything is almost like cutting off a limb or peeling off a layer of skin.”
Somewhere in one of her bags of clothing was a tie-dye dress bought for her at the age of 16 by an ex-boyfriend she dated for years and recently broke up with. She kept this trophy of first love for years (“for the memories”), but was now letting it go, straight into the arms of any shopper with $15 to burn.
It is not unusual for clothing to have incredible histories when it arrives in-store, according to Cindy Wheeler, who owns Beacon’s Closet. “Sometimes we get amazing pieces—turn of the century jackets with actual boning; it’s amazing they haven’t disintegrated through time,” she said. In a normal day, the store fills approximately 30 50-gallon bins with clothes bought on-site, with items they don’t want to buy donated to local charities. Sometimes these charity donations fill up to 70 of those giant bins on a daily basis. “There’s too much clothing in the world,” she said. “Nobody should be without clothes.”
Belleveau was not the only person disposing of the remnants of a failed romance. Parisienne Nathalie Chablat was also there with her young son. She was donating a $2,500 Gucci jacket, a Christmas gift the boy’s father left behind when he left the family. “I’m getting rid of some history,” she said triumphantly. “It’s been sitting in my house and I’ve been hoping for him to come back. Now I’ve got rid of it.” Beacon’s Closet handed her $75 for her troubles.
Sometimes, however, letting go is hard to do. Pete Scott, who regularly deposits clothing at the store, recalled selling a leather jacket given to him by a friend. “It was too big, but it was the perfect leather jacket,” he said. “Just right.” As soon as he left the store he knew he’d made a mistake. After a sleepless night, Scott returned the next morning to buy it back.
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