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This article first appeared in the New York Times in 2011.

BACK in the dark ages of my misspent youth, the cost of used clothing was always inversely proportional to the difficulty of finding it. Dumpster diving, though the least expensive, was the biggest long shot, and potentially the most nauseating and dangerous experience. Next came straight thrift — i.e., any rummage store named for a Catholic saint or the Salvation Army (a k a Sal’s).

Then there was a tectonic fashion shift: suddenly cool trash had cultural cachet. Better labels and fabrics were segregated from the thrift racks, and the word “vintage” replaced terms like “used,” “secondhand” and “next-to-new.” Some hipsters became a baby merchant class of scavenger-chic garmentos, just like the hippies before them, who trafficked in the kitschy Victoriana of their grandmothers.

The happy medium of a “vintage” clothing store has always been an elusive sweet spot. The ideal: a well-curated post-junk store that can articulate, anticipate and deliver style trends without losing sight of the fact that, from a financial perspective, the clothes are basically rubbish that happens to resemble the shapes of certain prevailing fads.

Shareen Mitchell began her retail career in Los Angeles, with both a robust eye for hipsterism and a pragmatic sense of thrift. Shareen Vintage in New York is an eccentric site — an unmarked black door above a hair salon — with almost obnoxiously weird store hours. (Wednesday and Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Saturdays, 12 to 6 p.m. That’s it.)

The day I visited, the shop was being run by a British gal of the young Phoebe Cates variety who was welcoming in that popular-senior-going-out-of-her-way-to-be-nice-to-the-hapless-new-sophomore kind of way. I hurried to keep up with her as she swept through the three rooms of crammed racks, breezily indicating sections with a lazy hand while reciting a breathless run-on sentence.

“Everything is organized by sleeve length, these are reworked and resort, these are party dresses, there’s minis, these are classic length, these are staff picks, most things are $48 and under except party dresses, and anything on a black velvet hanger is $88 and above because we paid a bit more for them, and the back room has furs and stuff for $80 and under ... and there’s no boys allowed, so you can just change anywhere.”

(True enough: While I was there, someone’s boyfriend was refused entry and had to sit in a desultory manner on a bench in the outside hallway.)

One of the problems with vintage stores is that they tend to cater to a limited range of looks, usually the one personally worn by the hipster-owner. The Shareen inventory, however, covers an impressively broad spectrum: billowy shirtdresses in Kool-Aid-colored silks and “Dynasty”-era shoulder pads (most around $52); pouffy Lacroix-knockoff prom dresses in taffeta and sequins; Gunne Sax dresses for that Australian girls’-school picnic at Hanging Rock; a rack of fringed suede and multicolored leathers.

The space has the feel of a secret girls’ clubhouse. There’s a big couch in the back room near what seems to be a functional but unused kitchen; foreign chick flicks are playing on a large flat-screen TV near bowls of Starburst fruit chews.

“It’s a proper girl place,” another saleswoman said. “You get to see other people trying things on. Girls say, ‘This would look better on you,’ and they swap. We serve wine in the evenings and just hang out.”

One gets the feeling that some girls are more invited than others, but unlike, say, the dehumanizing experience of the Loehmann’s group dressing room, being at Shareen with a bunch of trendy 20-somethings in chatty locker-room states of dishabille does seem to inspire a kind of situational intimacy.

I TRIED on a fluorescent pink-orange St. John knit dress from the mid-1960s — very “Mad Men,” with gold buttons up the front. With a visible question mark over my head, I turned to a girl who I assumed from various overheard remarks was an aspiring stylist. She appraised me with careful and squinty attention. “You know?” she eventually winced, through her big glasses, “maybe it’s not the greatest color on your skin.”

“Aha! I thought I looked more dead than usual. I think the pink has too much blue in it. Thank you.”

I replaced the dress, with a twinge of regret. Wherever you may stand on St. John knits, they are woven to an indestructible, almost antiballistic density; it was a real steal at under $200. Some duskier beauty than I will look like a Starburst fruit chew in it.

I succumbed to my usual tendencies. I found a Nicole Miller dress: a black jersey mock-turtleneck with big shoulder pads and a kind of harem skirt pin-tucked into multiple pleats for a sort of triangular, futurist bustle effect. Very Tilda Swinton and Mildred Pierce go to a Manhattan Transfer concert. It had threads coming loose, and it needed a severe dry-cleaning, but the shape was there; there was still life in it.

“You do look intimidatingly fashionable in that dress,” Phoebe Cates said. “And it’s got a great arse.”

Did I feel as if I belonged to Shareen’s special girl club?

No. That aspect is high-school tribal — you’re either one of their crowd, or you’re not. But I bought the dress anyway. I wasn’t shopping for cliques, and it was only $52.

(An Open Note to the Merchants of New York: The mystical incantation uttered by the saleswoman above is all you ever need to make my wallet magically appear. Even the most antisocial Gorgons are subject to the usual feminine vanities, once you charm the snakes out of their hair.)

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