Vintage shopping can play a big role in travel itineraries: recently made items are lovely keepsakes, but antiques capture a sense of place, history, and people.
For members of the black diaspora, especially those in the United States, having physical ties to those three areas can be elusive. Enter BLK MKT Vintage, an online business where founders Kiyanna Stewart (above left) and Jannah Handy map the black diaspora through vintage wares to ensure that these family, location, and community histories are preserved and perpetuated.
Stewart grew up “going to antique stores, garage sales, side-of-the-road vintage shops—everything you can imagine” with her mother. When she met and began dating Handy at Rutgers University (Stewart was finishing up her post-doc in women and gender studies; Handy was transitioning out of Wall Street), they began sourcing together on dates. Both had majored in African American/Africana studies, among other areas of concentration, and the activity helped them spend time together—although trawling through stores for secondhand goods was not initially one of Handy’s passions.
“I didn’t feel like I was a collector or someone who was interested in vintage until I saw the way that Kiyanna was utilizing it,” Handy says. “She made her graduate assistant’s apartment into something that should have been in a magazine. It showed me that vintage doesn’t have to be doilies and lace. It can be whatever you want it to be.”
Shopping as a couple turned into collecting as a couple, which turned into selling wares at markets on weekends.
“It wasn’t like: ‘Let’s start a business!’” Stewart says. “It was: ‘We can access a lot of these markets easily, and we can make some extra money and have fun doing this.'” (Handy also notes that they were at risk of hoarding, rather than collecting, unless they started sharing their finds with others.)
Their work now takes them to shops, markets, and stores throughout New Jersey, upstate New York, Philadelphia, Virginia, Baltimore, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, as well as places outside of the U.S.
At first glance, BLK MKT Vintage is simply a purveyor of Black Americana—an “archival designator” in the antiques industry that Handy and Stewart define for themselves as “material culture pertaining to the histories, tradition, or folklore of the United States, centering the narratives of black people throughout the diaspora.”
“One thing this work reinforces is just how much systems influence something as small as your belongings,” Handy says. “What does it look like, for example, after the Red Summer of 1919 in Chicago when white rioters burned down 1,000 black homes and businesses? It seems trivial to think about the handkerchief someone might have gotten from their great aunt who was still enslaved—but it’s gone, never to be had again. How do all of these systems trickle down and affect the things that we are able to reclaim today?”
To start out, Handy and Stewart made appearances at markets on the New York City secondhand scene including Hell’s Kitchen Flea, Artists & Fleas, and Brooklyn Flea. Their customer base began growing—but not among black buyers. It wasn’t until they launched digital sales that their audience shifted.
“It was interesting having the mission and the intention that we did but not particularly connecting with what we saw to be the right community,” Stewart says. “That’s not to say that this work is not for everyone, but that this work centers black folks."
Nonetheless, centering black folks also means centering the spectrum of their experiences. Handy and Stewart say the science of their sourcing comes down to gut instinct, but they are aware that that leads to a subjective, “dotted line” in judgement.
“I think some folks want it to be this very clean, ‘black girl joy, black boy joy, black person joy’ collection when, for me, it’s about representing the fullness of who we’ve been,” Stewart says. “That does really mean, exploring, holding onto, and giving access to some items that are not going to evoke joy.”
At times, that means including “Sambo archetypes and Golliwog dolls” as well as photos of Shirley Chisolm on the cover of black magazines.
Whatever the case, the couple sources wares by working with select partners and, most often, scouring for items themselves in shops, markets, and stores. (Brimfield Antique Flea Market and Chilmark Flea Market in Massachusetts are two hotspots.) They are not the first people, black or otherwise, to focus on the black diaspora in vintage, but they aim to distinguish themselves by making it easy for anyone, anywhere to buy items.
On the BLK MKT website and Instagram account, you’ll find potential buyers staking their claim on pieces in the comments—or trying to convince the first buyers to resell. The founders have worked with fashion stylist and consultant Shiona Turini to provide prop rentals and set designs for Issa Rae’s Insecure, bringing black vintage to modern pop culture. They have also collaborated on a museum loan program, joined pop-ups, and participated in music festival activations.
Handy and Stewart say their increased visibility in the antique and vintage world has also led to moments of camaraderie—and big wins. Now that the founders have gained some recognition, people come to BLK MKT stoop sales with “bags [full of items] or boxes of vinyl records” that they might otherwise have thrown out after a loved one died. In terms of their colleagues, one seller moved Handy to tears by giving her the very last NAACP float sign he had in stock. Another time, an older white woman who greeted her with “You sell black stuff, right?” (an anxiety-inducing introduction) only to reveal two signed, original photos of Muhammad Ali when he was still called Cassius Clay. The images had outlived a fire in the photographer’s home and the older woman thought Handy might be interested in acquiring them.
“Sometimes the story is not so much the actual item but what the item has survived and who helped it survive,” she says.
They hope to open their first brick-and-mortar location in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn—the borough where they both grew up. The store will have a wall of portraits they have collected for more than five years—a visual representation of everyday, non- “exceptional” black individuals they say is rare to see “outside of a museum.”
“The store is new terrain but it was important to us because we wanted a sense of stability and permanence,” says Stewart. “That’s so important to black folks’ history throughout the diaspora. We’re providing a space that does the items justice.”
How to vintage shop on your own
Stewart and Handy have years of experience sourcing—but that doesn’t mean you can’t get in on the action. Here are their tips for shopping vintage during your own travels.
Do your research. “Before you go on a trip, find out what stores are in the area,” Stewart advises. Diversify your search language to get the best results. For example, some locations might be listed under “antiques” while others go by “vintage,” “flea,” “secondhand,” or “swap meet.” Whatever the case, build an itinerary, bring your list with you, and call ahead to confirm hours of operation.
Go early! Handy visits two or three markets in South Jersey each week and rises at 5 a.m. to make sure she doesn’t miss out on anything. She says what pushes her is “FOMOV: fear of missing out on vintage.” Getting to flea markets early can determine what you find, so she tells eager seekers to rest up and rise early.
Factor in shipping. A trip to Hyde Park Records in Chicago earlier this year resulted in Handy and Stewart shipping four boxes back to New Jersey that weighed roughly 40 pounds each. The pair spent about $1,000 on records and another few hundred dollars on shipping. “Don’t just think about the price you pay for an item but the price to get it home,” Stewart says. Check the cost of freight shipping and double-check luggage restrictions.
For more shopping stories, visit our complete guide to souvenir shopping.
