St. Louis vintage store owner works to salvage inventory lost in Sk8 Liborius Church fire

Madelyn Lumpe, owner of Black Rabbit Vintage in Benton Park, talks about a dress she has in the window, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. She got it from someone who also gave her a picture of herself wearing the dress about 50 years ago.

Post-Dispatch photo

More than just skate ramps and rails were lost when the Sk8 Liborius Church in North St. Louis caught fire earlier this summer. A few construction workers who had found shelter in the church home between jobs, artists who’d claimed studio space to teach paint classes and one sculptor with an installation in the basement — all saw loss.

For 33-year-old vintage store owner Madelyn Lumpe, Sk8 Liborius’ walls had acted as storage for some of her most valuable treasures: clothing, jewelry, hats and gloves. Lumpe, owner of Black Rabbit Vintage in Benton Park West, said her business is still on the mend as she works to sew and scrub her way through the damage caused by the June 28 fire.

Destruction after a four-alarm fire in the historic St. Liborius church that had been converted into skate park Sk8 Liborius on Thursday, June 29, 2023, in St. Louis.

Selling vintage is a tough business on its own, dealers say. Between the labor, time and expertise it takes to cultivate and care for old clothes, sellers are often stretched thin. On top of that, the rise of thrifting and throwback styles makes for a saturated, and thus competitive, market. Experts say that those who enter the vintage business to make money will ultimately burn out.

Lumpe had stored about a quarter of her inventory in the German gothic church-turned-indoor-skate-park Sk8 Liborius Church for the past two years. Lumpe, a St. Louis native, said she’s been friends with the owners of Sk8 Liborius for years so when David Blum, one of the park’s founders, asked if she wanted to use the church’s rectory as storage, it seemed like a win-win.

But after the church burned, Lumpe discovered most her vintage inventory was sopping wet and destroyed by soot. Clothes suffered water and smoke damage, fabrics were burned and melted from the heat. And her insurance policy didn’t cover off-premise storage.

Vintage clothes laid out in Madelyn Lumpe's yard in South City following a four-alarm fire at Sk8 Liborius on June 28.

Lumpe called what she stored in Sk8 Liborius her “good stuff.” This included vintage designer pieces, fur and leather items, clothing with antique lace and “stuff that really hurt me” to lose, she said.

More than half of the pieces stored at the church are a loss, and she expects that to grow. “When it comes down to it, it’s just things but at the same time, it’s like ‘I found that. I did that,’” Lumpe said.

Black Rabbit Vintage opened in 2021 and is solely run, sourced and operated by Lumpe. Vintage clothing had always been a passion for her.

These days, it’s hard to sustain a vintage clothing business, said Maggie Muellner, president of the Vintage Fashion Guild.

“It’s hard to sustain if profit is your motive,” Muellner. “You have to love it.”

First-time customer Ethan Evans, of St. Louis, bids farewell to Black Rabbit Vintage store owner Madelyn Lumpe, left, after purchasing a tie he needed to attend a wedding, on Sept. 15, 2022 in the Benton Park area of St. Louis.

The market is saturated with people who are selling vintage to become social media influencers, Muellner said. Plus, vintage clothing is harder to find as fast-fashion items, from stores like Shein and H&M, aren’t durable enough to one day age into vintage clothing, which is loosely defined as anything older than two decades.

At her home in South City, Lumpe has been working to salvage what survived. Initially, Lumpe said she felt like she was in a race against time and mold — and the mold won.

Now, after sorting between the potentially savable and the unwearable, she’s tackling the cleaning stage. Most of her damaged inventory will be hand washed, but Lumpe said she has also been shopping around for professional restoration services and dry cleaning.

At the same time, Black Rabbit Vintage continues to operate normal business hours. Fellow vintage dealers offered to watch the store some days, so that Lumpe could focus more on restoration efforts. She’s doing as much as she can herself, hand-dyeing, patchworking and experimenting.

The rectory of Sk8 Liborius is seen after it was damaged by water and soot following a four-alarm fire on June 28. Madelyn Lumpe stored one-fourth of her inventory for Black Rabbit Vintage in the rectory.

Vintage clothing needs to be hand-washed in cold water with a gentle, but effective stripping cleaning agent. It takes multiple hours to wash a single item and pieces need to be done individually, not all together like a load of laundry.

On top of that, it’s expensive. Retro Clean, a vintage-specific stain remover, is $17 a package and is only enough product to treat three items.

Kay Miller, co-owner of Assassin Vintage on Cherokee Street, said cleaning vintage clothing is a tedious and sometimes challenging process. Each piece needs specific care based on how old it is, what it is made out of, how it was stored and how long stains have set in.

She and her co-owner, Tammy Heet, both have “tubs and tubs of clothes that still need to be washed at our houses.”

They source the store’s vintage clothes from estate sales, auctions and online bidding websites, Miller said. They also travel to meet potential sellers and buy clothes from people who contact them with pieces. Assassin Vintage is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays to allow them time to catch up on washing, mending and buying.

A newly-arrived group of vintage hats sits on the counter at Black Rabbit Vintage, owned by Madelyn Lumpe, in Benton Park, on Sept. 15, 2022.

“Sometimes we spend more time on things than we need to and we don’t make enough off of it but we want to save it,” Miller said. “We don’t want to just toss it.”

Katie May, owner of May’s Place, agreed that the most difficult part of selling vintage clothing is the “one-off nature things.”

Between sourcing, washing, mending, measuring, tagging, photographing and putting it out on the floor, the amount of work that goes into one item is intensive, May said.

Lumpe said she sees herself as a “memory collector, not a vintage dealer,” and that she’ll keep working to repair and build her business.

“I’ve built it from the ground up. I’ve put my entire life savings into the store,” Lumpe said. “I’m going to try my damndest to get everything done.”

Who doesn't love vintage shopping? It starts with the thrill of a possible rare find and usually ends with at least one item purchased that’s either a steal or reminds you of something from your childhood that puts a smile on your face. But being a pro thrifter doesn’t come naturally to all. Yair Ben-Dor has more.

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