Vintage With Friends: Meg Barnes of Eclectic Inventory
Vintage With Friends: Meg Barnes of Eclectic Inventory
A chat about vintage watches, family, and Betsey Johnson’s yard sale
It’s hard to make friends as an adult. Lucky for me, the world of vintage is full of other obsessives, and I’ve connected with some truly wonderful and passionate people in my years as a vintage dealer. Vintage With Friends will be an ongoing series where I chat with fellow vintage lovers about how they got into vintage, and why they love it so dang much.
Meg and I first met when we were both vendors at Regeneration in Williamsburg several years ago. We’ve since crossed paths at various other markets and events, most recently reconnecting when we both joined Seven Wonders Collective at the beginning of this year. Meg’s vintage brand, Eclectic Inventory, is one of the Manhattan shop’s top sellers for good reason. She has a strong point of view - think lush textiles, beautiful construction, and a strong autumnal color palette. Her rack is typically stocked in shades of plum and olive and cocoa, topped with an array of beautiful vintage designer bags.
In the past couple of years, Meg has become especially well known for her vintage watches. Working at Seven Wonders’ Lower East Side location means inevitably pulling out the watch case a dozen times a day, standing by as customers excitedly try on pieces from vintage brands like Gucci and Pulsar.
I recently went over to Meg’s apartment in Brooklyn to chat more about her path as a vintage dealer. She had arranged a few special pieces in her living room to share with me, including her great aunt’s silver charm bracelet, a necklace converted from her grandmother’s watch face, and a rosary gifted from her boyfriend’s mom.
“This is my grandpa’s watch, and it’s kind of how I originally got into watches,” she explained, showing me the square watch with a woven metal mesh band. She tells me the story of where it all began.
“On one St. Patrick’s Day in college, I was wearing one of his watches. It was a Timex - it looked like this, but bigger. I would wear it like every day. I was out, drinking, of course, on St. Patrick’s Day. A lot.” We both laugh.
“I was really drunk, and I should not have been wearing his watch, but it looked cute with my outfit! It was a Timex, so it wasn’t anything valuable, but of course it was invaluable to me. I woke up the next morning and it was gone. I looked through my room, I asked around, just gone. My friend said that her watch was gone too, off her wrist, so we think someone was being a little klepto that night and stealing them.
I was so sad that I lost it, so that summer when I went home I went to the mall to Fossil to look at watches. I was like ‘I want to find that watch again!’ Of course I would never actually find it, but I wanted something that reminded me of it. So I’m in there shopping, and the guy offers me a job. I ended up accepting it and so I worked at Fossil, and I learned how to change batteries, change links, and that kind of stuff. A little bit about watches.
The next summer I worked at Nordstrom in the accessory department, in the designer watch section, which back then was like Michael Kors and Marc Jacobs. I didn’t really think much of it, it was a job. I liked watches, but it wasn’t like I was obsessed.”
Meg picks up her grandfather’s watch again as she continues. “This is his, it's a wind watch, but it doesn’t work. I wear it more as a good luck charm. I feel like he is blessing me with this watch business in a weird way, like it was sort of lucky that I lost your watch! It was meant to be. And of all days also, it started on St. Patrick’s Day, it’s kind of weirdly lucky. It was like bad luck, but it all got me on this path of watches.”
I asked her how all of this led to her selling vintage watches herself.
“When I first was on Etsy [in 2012] I sold a few, but it wasn’t the main thing by any means. When I got really into it was probably around 3 and a half to 4 years ago. I was at a thrift store and I found a ton of them, and I was like ‘oh, these are cute.' So I bought them all, and put them out, and sold them all. So I kept going, and kept building, and found ways to find more, and to find better ones. It just kind of snowballed, and it’s become the heart of my business right now. I’m using that to kind of build everything else around it.”
I nod, remarking on their popularity. “They’re such a huge seller at Seven Wonders! Every time I check our sales, it’s like ‘there’s another watch.’”
At this point we make our way over to the clothing rack on the other side of the room. She shows me a chic brown skirt suit set passed down from her aunt, a corporate VP.
“In all of my family, she’s probably the most stylish,” Meg says. “She was a single woman, retired at 45, she tells me stories about being in the corporate world as a woman in the 90’s. She’s in Georgia, and she just discovered thrifting. She had never thrifted before. Now she’s always thrifting around and she’ll randomly be like ‘I sent you a package!’ She’ll send me a box full of stuff she thrifted, a lot of times it’s like untouched Ferragamo shoes and other insane stuff.”
Meg picks up another piece, describing another way that her family connects through vintage. “This [dress] my little sister just found for me. My little sister Rachel has really great taste, so she’ll help me source a bit. She found this and I was like… girl. It’s so me. I wore this on my 30th birthday! I wanted my sisters to come to New York and do a photo shoot together, so I wore this dress. I’ve thought about selling it, but… no.”
We move on to another dress, this one a floral number in a slinky, feminine shape that many collectors would immediately recognize. “This one I got from Betsey Johnson’s yard sale [in 2015],” Meg explains. She later sent me a link to an article about the sale. What a moment! I’m jealous.
“I remember driving, I was going between Sag Harbor towards East Hampton on this side road. And there’s this sign, and it says ‘Betsey Johnson Yard Sale’ and I’m like ‘no, this is a joke.’ There were like 20 racks of the most beautiful dresses. I paid around $50 for each dress, which I thought was a lot of money back then, but looking back…”
We chat for a while about changes in the vintage market, and the other dresses from the sale that she sold afterwards for way under their current market price. The world of vintage is fickle, with styles and labels and pieces constantly on a roller coaster of value.
As we sit and talk in Meg’s place, it’s impossible not to notice the decor. Her distinct color palette extends out from her brand into her person life, visible in her living space and her personal wardrobe. Her strong sense of aesthetics comes partly from her years working in interior design, her original career path when she first moved to New York.
“I got burned out from [interior design]. I had too many crazy bosses and crazy clients. I realized it’s very much a customer service based industry, especially residential. You’re dealing with a lot of personalities, and really trying to appease a client more than being fully creative. For me, I felt like I wasn’t express myself creatively, and was working like a dog for not a lot of money. So I was like, you know what, I’m just going to build my own thing. Nobody is going to give me a project where I was truly doing my own thing. I realized what I loved about interior design was the objects. Cool furniture, how objects come together in a space. I really just love the things if you break it down. So why not just sell cool things?”
“A lot of my website is home decor - that’s what I was selling first. That’s kind of where I want to get back to. But you need the right space, it’s harder to sell than people think. People want free shipping, but it’s so expensive to ship.” In-person sales often just make the most sense for decor, so Meg set her sights on building a physical space. Earlier this week, I attended the opening party for her new Williamsburg Studio. The space, of course, is beautiful. “That’s what the studio is for, to build the Eclectic world.”
The Eclectic world now lives partly on the studio’s warm shelving, beckoning with burnished silver and designer heels and a metallic gold vintage Coach bag. The racks are stocked with wool skirts, leather, and an incredible selection of fall coats. Her studio is officially open to the public, with recurring Open Studio days every Saturday. See here for more information on dates and location.
On my way out of Meg’s apartment, I riffled through a plastic box of watches on their way to be restocked at her various sales locations. I pulled out a gold tone Anne Klein, studded in rhinestones. I admired the way it sparkled on my wrist as Meg nodded in approval. “Keep it,” she said. “It’s yours.”
I refused such a generous offer, but she insisted. And now I have my first ever watch, from the queen of vintage watches herself!
To find Meg, her watches, vintage designer bags, upcoming pop up dates and more…
Her Instagram: @eclecticinventory
Her website: Eclectic Inventory