Five favourite Hong Kong vintage clothing stores, and three online options too

High fashion and the high street have been reworking the pseudo-vintage trend over and over. You know what we mean: the worn-out jeans, the overwashed polos, the retro-ripped jackets. For OCD-types who can’t bear the thought of – shock, horror! – someone once having worn your clothes, we kind of get it. Why not actually go for something authentically vintage – it’s often more affordable.

Hong Kong is starting to see a lot of high-quality second-hand stores. You probably haven’t heard of them, hidden away as they are in low-rent malls and random commercial buildings; some are online only. But search no more – we’ve picked our five favourite vintage shops, from retro classics to couture.

Midwest Vintage

Hidden in a sleepy mall north of Tin Hau’s Electric Road, Midwest Vintage claims to have been the city’s first vintage outlet, and in truth it has been going more than 20 years. It is made up of two adjacent stores, one for menswear and the other for women’s clothes. As its name suggests, Midwest is all about Americana, and to emphasise the fact the owner has dotted items from a rather creepy, and dusty, collection of old toys around the store.

Dig deep and there are plenty of gems to be found: hidden among the standard cache of well-worn, cheesy T-shirts and endless pairs of Levi’s we unearthed 1960s-style bomber jackets, ’50s-era pin-up dresses and an honest-to-goodness Hells Angels-style biker jacket. Midwest has branched out into creating clothes itself under its First Edition label, comprising far-gone vintage redesigned in contemporary styles. Prices run from less than HK$100 for a 1980s summer-camp T-shirt to a good HK$5,000 for that leather jacket we’re so desperately coveting.

Shop 58, Victoria Centre, 15 Watson Road, Tin Hau, tel: 2802 6886 midwest-vintage.com