ANDERSONVILLE — A new shop is bringing a “vintage time machine” to Andersonville.
Alex Jones and her girlfriend, Abigail Millner, opened Fad2Fresh, 5653 N. Ashland Ave., over the weekend. The business is a way to express their shared love of thrifting, music, movies and nostalgia, they said, and it’s stocked full of their best vintage finds from the ’30s to the early 2000s.
“We love hearing people say, ‘Oh my God, I had this when I was little,’” Jones said. “We want it to be a place where you’ll be able to find something you remember playing with as a kid or clothes that you remember seeing in your grandmother’s closet.”
Inside the store is an ever-changing supply of clothes, housewares, knickknacks, toys, old photos, records and pop culture items.
“It’s just a collection of cool little things we both love,” Jones said. “Abi loves vintage glassware — she can’t go anywhere without buying a cool pitcher from the ’50s. But I just love random stuff. So in the store, you’ll see the weird clock made out of cigarettes I found on the shelf right above her beautiful decanters.”
The pair — who have lived in Rogers Park for four years — have spent countless hours exploring estate sales, garage sales and thrift shops across the state since Millner introduced Jones to the hobby a few years ago.
“Abi is my voice of reason. I’m leaving at 3 a.m. to get to estate sales first, grabbing all these things, and she’s on the phone like, ‘Let’s calm down and evaluate. You have that already; why do you need another?’” Jones said. “But, now that we have a store, I can tell her, ‘Maybe I don’t need it, but the people of Andersonville do.’”
For Jones, one of the best parts about finding cool vintage stuff is uncovering — or inventing — the story of the item’s past life.
“I love going into someone’s sale and hearing that they wore the jeans I’m buying to Woodstock back in the day,” Jones said. “The stories behind things are what really attracts me to thrifting. And when we don’t know who had it before, we love making up our own story. We don’t even know them, but we see something and we’re just like, ‘Someone named Melinda definitely would.’”
Fad2Fresh is open noon-7 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday noon-5 p.m. Sundays. For more information, visit the store’s Instagram.
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