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Business|A Beloved Clothing Store Closed. A Customer Bought All 4,500 Items.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/business/vicky-szuflita-vintage-store.html
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“Everything Must Go,” said the sign on the door of Rags to Riches in Cordele, Ga., and Vicky Szuflita could not resist taking a look inside.
The women’s clothing store contained multitudes — shoulder pads, vintage brooches, old denim faded by years of sunlight shining through the window and floral A-line skirts that fit just so. Also, gowns. “There were so many sequins,” Ms. Szuflita said. “I wanted all of them.”
The store, however, kept just a few regular hours and soon shut its doors permanently. The clothes remained, and many months later, she taped a handwritten request to the door. Could she somehow get inside and buy just a few more things?
Another few months went by before the new owner of the building replied. He seemed to have little interest in retail or the inventory that the previous owners had inexplicably left behind.
Eventually, he did open a line of communication, and Ms. Szuflita’s hankering for one last shot at the racks suddenly evolved. He let her take a look inside, and last year, she summoned up the nerve to make an ask: What if everything did in fact go? Could she take the entire contents of the store off his hands?
A Spare House in Georgia
As a teenager in Brooklyn, Ms. Szuflita, who is 31, had a passing fancy for fast fashion, but she preferred to outfit herself with stoop-sale finds. In high school, she gravitated to items from vintage stores like Beacon’s Closet, a beloved New York City mini-chain.
