ESSENTIAL EVENT // Sturbridge Antique Textile and Vintage Fashion Show

Something like a thrift shop on steroids, the Sturbridge Antique Textile and Vintage Fashion Show hosts 140 vendors from around the world. On September 5, everyone from museum buyers to crafty sewers with a taste for the old school to fashion editors flying in from Japan converge upon Sturbridge, MA (three hours north of NYC) to admire rare couture and pick up quilting scraps.

“My favorite thing about the show,” says organizer Linda Zukas, who founded the event 20 years ago, “is that in one stall, you’ll have something selling for $12,000, and then at the next, people will be under a table, digging through bins for fabric. We have a lot of the stuff from the 1960s and ‘70s that’s come back in style, but a lot of our stuff is much older.”

Zukas says in addition to clothing and fabric are fashion magazines and ads, wallpaper, rugs, fans, lampshades and, for the budding seamstress, patterns. Admission is $10.

--Layla Schlack