This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.
Fad2Fresh is more than a vintage store—it’s a community third space.
The Black queer women-owned business started out as a simple hobby, scouting out vintage items, for its owners, Alex Jones and Abigail Millner. Before long, the couple opened a store that both highlighted the best of their vintage finds and created a space for all members of the community to feel welcome.
Jones credits the idea for the store to her girlfriend, Millner, who first took her to thrift stores back when the pair started dating. They’d drive for hours to find little antique stores or check out new places while on vacation, and gradually began collecting different items.
“She already had a really cool collection of albums, which kind of got us started because we both love music [and] older stuff, and we appreciate that a lot,” Jones said. “And it grew from there. We started collecting, and then my girlfriend was like, ‘What are you going to do with all this stuff?’”
Turning passions into a business
They took their love of vintage and turned it into a business about six or seven years ago. The first market they did was part of Illinois Vintage Fest. They added a basketball hoop to make their booth a fun spot to hang out, and even gave away free drinks. From there, they went to Indiana and New York, among other places, to find vintage items they loved, meeting future mentors in the industry along the way.
They eventually realized that promoting shopping for secondhand and older items helped them contribute to environmental sustainability.
“The world is so obsessed with nostalgia,” Jones said. “I feel like people just see the quality of things that were made 30 plus years ago is just so much better than the stuff that’s fast fashion now.”
The pair get to see people living that nostalgia when they come into the store, which opened in 2022, and find things they haven’t seen in many years. Exclamations of “I had this when I was a kid!” or “I thought I’d never see this toy again!” are not uncommon, according to Jones.
On the other end of that spectrum, though, kids have come in and picked up rotary phones and asked what they are, even calling them “ancient.”
Jones has built connections with regular customers, such as one man in his seventies, Jeff. He comes in every day and likes the jazz Jones normally plays in the shop.
Sometimes kids come in asking for records or music from the early 2000s, which the shop doesn’t have because that is so recent. However, the always-evolving perception of nostalgia is something Jones considers when she thinks about the future; after all, the ‘90s are now 30 years ago.
“What I want to do at the shop is to bring that back to all ages of people,” Jones said of her hope to bring everyone those fun feelings of nostalgia. “This is a hub for all ages to learn and be able to get cool things as well … I want the young kids to embrace the fact that these things are cool, and how better it is to buy stuff like this and to keep it going.”
Welcoming the neighborhood’s young people
Young people are an important regular staple of the shop, coming in after school running from other kids, or asking Jones to style them like modern celebrities, such as rapper/designer Tyler, the Creator. When customers see their favorite celebrities wearing vintage clothes, they feel inspired to look for similar pieces.
Jones offers free snacks and gives them a space to just hang out without needing any money. She wants people of all ages and financial means to enjoy the atmosphere, with kids or students sometimes bartering with her about prices—similar to a store she had near her childhood home on Chicago’s South Side.
One day a few months ago, a woman came in and told Jones she appreciates that her son can come in and hang out nearly every day, with other stores in the area potentially being averse to having school-age children sitting around inside. Jones aims to create a space for kids to feel they aren’t constantly feeling surveilled and are just treated like people.
“It’s crazy that being nice to someone is so niche,” she said.“[Fad2Fresh] is a great thing for the community. Abby [Millner] always says it’s going to be a community center one day because it’s always just folks in there of all types of ages and gender and race, and I love that for the neighborhood.”
Jones and Millner’s friends — Aria Machinski and Taylor Martin — met the pair a few years ago while attending vintage markets around Chicago. Soon enough, the Fad2Fresh storefront opened and Machinski and Martin even found themselves helping out around the shop sometimes.
Through their friendship and with the owners and time spent in the physical store, they’ve seen its community impact grow firsthand.
“[Jones] has like a million dreams, but one of her dreams is to open a community center,” Machinski said. “We always joke that she did that with the vintage store.”
Both friends have seen how the kids especially flock to the store, with Jones’ selection of snacks and Capri-Suns always available. Martin said when he’d work there during the week, kids would stop by and specifically ask for Jones.
“There’s a couple schools in the area, and all the kids know it’s a safe space to go to to pick up a snack or candy or drink after school, or just walk by and say hi,” he said.
Seeing what the future holds
Fad2Fresh is nevertheless preparing to make a change. Jones said they recently received communication from the building’s new landlord—who took over in October 2023—that the store needed to be out by the end of June. With limited time to find a new spot, Jones said she’s looking in Andersonville and beyond, considering places in Uptown or Edgewater as well.
Being one of only a few Black-owned businesses around her, Jones said it’s important for her that everyone feels comfortable in the shop. She said the Andersonville community has been wonderful to her, considering it’s openly queer-friendly. In the future, she’d also love to see more Black and Brown businesses nearby.
Years ago, she was mentoring kids at different schools and had a student who was Black and queer. Jones still talks to her, and gets to be a role model for her. She said her own role model, her mother, wasn’t ever afraid to take up space as a Black woman, and it’s influenced the way she goes about life.
Her mother’s genuine nature continues with Jones, and she said she tries to create positive interactions in the shop every day. There’s a couch right next to the desk at the store, allowing people to simply sit and talk if they’d like. She’s just looking for a genuine conversation and human connection.
“That’s all I need,” she said. “I don’t need you to buy a t-shirt, I don’t need your kid to spend money here. I try to be more than just a little shop on the corner that sells old stuff.”