Cheyenne Woman Makes More Money Thrifting Vintage Clothing Than At Her Old Job

CHEYENNE — Macradee Aegerter first was caught by the lure of vintage clothing while she was a teenager working at a Beverly Hills designer store, Fred Segal.

Then a Laramie, Wyoming, resident, she spent the summer with an aunt who was helping her build a great resume for a future fashion writing career by working at what was then one of America’s most fashionable stores.

“I wanted to be my aunt,” Aegerter told Cowboy State Daily. “She was very big in the fashion industry. She worked for Anna Wintour and then went on to do her own things and was — and still is — really incredible in the fashion industry.”

Wintour was the longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine and is still with Conde Nast as a global editorial director and chief content officer.

Aegerter didn’t have a lot of money to work with at the time she was working for Segal. She was only making minimum wage, which was around $5 at the time. But she knew she still needed to look very stylish and well put-together.

Fortunately, she had a knack even then for thrifting a high-end look on a limited budget.

“I was wearing this thrifted red-and white-striped T-shirt that I had cut the neck on and sort of tailored the bottom to be a little more cropped,” she recalled. “And the day I was wearing it to Fred Segal, all these very wealthy shoppers kept saying, ‘I want the shirt you have on.’”

Some of these shoppers would ultimately spend as much as $20,000 in one shopping trip at the Fred Segal store. But Aegerter’s shirt was the one thing they could not buy. It was the only one like it in the world because she had thrifted it and upcycled it herself.

“I’m like, ‘Well, they don’t sell that here,’” she said. “This was a $5 thrift from the store down the street. But that’s when it really struck me that you could actually look as good, if not better, wearing upcycled thrift pieces, even in a high-end designer store.”

High School: Her Own Personal Runway

These days, Aegerter wouldn’t think twice about selling the shirt off her back to someone else. She owns macvintagerevival.com, an online store that’s dedicated to selling high-quality, stylish or upcycled thrift items to a world that right now is clamoring for them.

The global second-hand clothing market is already a multi-billion dollar market, and is expected to grow to $367 billion by 2029, according to THREDup.com’s Resale Report.

Last year, record numbers of shoppers bought secondhand clothing, according to THREDup, and this year, searches for all kinds of vintage clothes are spiking for both rental platforms and online retailers. 

That’s made Aegerter’s one-time side hustle much more lucrative than she ever dreamed possible back when she was a kid growing up in Laramie, teaching herself the tricks of the vintage trade.

High school was her own personal runway — a place to try out all of her fashion ideas. She just had to find ways to do it on a budget. 

“That was before internet shopping,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of stores and, in order to dress differently than everyone else, the only option really was thrifting.”

For her first efforts, she didn’t consider any upcycling at all. It was more about the art of spotting a rare treasure in the pile of ho-hum, low-quality items at a thrift store or a yard sale. 

Home economics, however, taught her to see a brand-new world of possibilities. She could tailor an item that was almost right, shaping it to fit her body or her style, either one. She could strategically place decorative lace or appliqués to patch an area that wasn’t perfect or needed a little mending. 

And she could even deconstruct vintage men’s jeans and completely transform them, creating an extra-durable and beautiful jean dress, accented with lace or other accessories. 

The possibilities were only limited by her own imagination. 

When Quality Still Mattered

One of the big attractions to vintage clothing for Aegerter is the quality.

True vintage clothing is 50 years or older and made in America — back when quality still mattered and clothes were made to last more than one season.

Back then, people might save up an entire year to afford one or two items of high-quality clothing and then wear them for years to come. After clothing was outsourced to foreign countries, the quality went steadily downhill.

Today, the world throws away an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste around the globe, Aegerter said, a large portion of which is fast fashion created for American markets.

It’s a figure Aegerter still finds stunning.

“So many American consumers want to wear something once, put it on social media, and then feel like they can’t wear it again,” she said. 

Planned Obsolescence

Manufacturers have reinforced that behavior by making things that aren’t meant to last more than a season, forcing consumers to buy more stuff.

It’s a tactic some refer to as planned obsolescence in things like the automotive industry, but it applies to cheaply made clothing as well.

Vintage clothes, on the other hand, have already lasted 50 years and will last another 50 with the proper care, because the fabric is so much thicker and more durable.

That makes them a way to affordably escape the planned obsolescence cycle.

“Just feel this muslin,” she said, holding up a vintage pillowcase printed with a pretty picture of some birds. “Feel how much heavier it is.”

The fact that there are a few stains on the pillowcase isn’t the problem it might at first seem. A little soak in OxiClean is likely to get rid of any stains. If not, then just a little bit of dye will do the rest of the work, and then the material can be cut up to make excellent patches.

“The Japanese have this thing they call wabi-sabi,” she said. “And it’s that nothing’s perfect. Everything has cracks and holes, and the beauty in that is fixing it up and saving it.”

It’s a bit like kintsugi — a Japanese word that means gold joining. The underlying concept is that something which is broken can be even more beautiful because of the break, once it’s been repaired. The concept usually applies to pottery, but Aegerter applies it to fabric instead.

Mom Jeans Ridiculed For Good Reason

T-shirts at the Fred Segal store cost around $118 at the time Aegerter was working there.

That kind of price for her $5 thrifted T-shirt would have been a massive upsell considering how little time and effort she put into it.

It had only taken her about 10 minutes to snip the garment and sew it up the way she wanted it making the cost, including labor, around $6.

These days, Aegerter spends a lot more time and effort on her craft than that.

Each garment averages about four days of effort, from finding garments and fabrics at yard sales, estate sales, and thrift stores to mending and adjusting things as needed.

“I don’t really change the integrity of really well-made garments,” she said. “I just make it wearable. But on things that are sort of boring and need a little makeover, I like putting some embroidery on there.”

Primarily, she looks for men’s vintage clothing. The reason for that is the quality of fabric for men’s clothes tended to be much more durable than for women’s clothes.

“Men needed durable clothing out in the fields,” Aegerter said. “Women’s clothing was a lot more trendy and stylish. It didn’t tend to last as long.”

For pearl snap shirts, Aegerter will tailor a shirt to better fit a woman’s body, and sometimes she even turns them into dresses. 

But men’s jeans don’t typically need any alterations.

“Their quality, construction, and style is unmatched,” she said. 

Mom jeans of that era, meanwhile, were ridiculed for a good reason.

“They weren’t flattering at all,” Aegerter said. “They have a tapered leg and super high rear pockets that make your butt look as long as a horse’s face. So, I think all women should be wearing men’s vintage jeans because they’re just great.”

For customers who want a few adjustments, such as lowering a waistline to better fit their figure, Aegerter is happy to oblige. 

The Good Problem

Aegerter discovered how lucrative her side hustle could be in an unusual way.

She was fighting with her television network at the time over pay issues, after discovering that all the women in the Denver television market were being paid significantly less than men of the same age and experience.

“I fought them on it, and I actually won a big lawsuit for gender discrimination,” Aegerter said.

During the battle, she was offered a job by a rival television station across the street.

“I had a one-year noncompete, so I thought, ‘Well, OK, I’m going to do this vintage for a year, sit out my noncompete, and then go across the street,’” she said. “Well, when the year ended, I was just in love. I was like, ‘No, this is it. This is what I was meant to do.’ And I didn’t go back to television.”

So far, thanks to the rising popularity of vintage clothing, she’s made not only enough money, but more than what she did before.

“I was very happily surprised by that, because I am actually working fewer hours now than I did as a reporter,” she said. “So, I’m making more money and enjoying life.”

She doesn’t yet have a brick-and-mortar store, though she is considering the possibility. 

“Right now, I sell online and through Instagram, and I do pop-ups,” she said. “My next pop-up is in Sheridan at a really, really cool market called Born in A Barn. It’s for all artisan, upcycled, vintage, handmade items.”

Her most recent pop-up was during Cheyenne Frontier Days, where she sold out of every item.

That includes all 40 of the vintage T-shirt blanks she’d found and printed with old travel and tourism slogans, “Big Wyoming” and “Wyoming is What America Was.” 

They were developed while her grandfather, Frank Norris Jr. was travel and tourism director of Wyoming in the 1960s and ‘70s, and she has a particular interest in collecting anything related to that.

Her CFD sellout has put her a little under the gun to get ready for the Born in a Barn pop-up, but it’s a good problem to have.

In a world full of problems, few are better than those that come from escaping the paycheck-to-paycheck life by focusing on what one loves — and then succeeding on one’s own terms.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.