Walking through Ragstock in Dinkytown is like going through the back of your baby-boomer parents’ closets, where those clothes from the ’60s and ’70s are stashed. But you must pay a fee at the register for each item you take from the closet.
Although some people just go there to land groovy outfits for Halloween or disco parties, many make it their one-stop shop for clothing. To Daily Grapevine award voters it’s also the best near-campus clothing emporium.
“We do a great amount of business (selling clothes for parties),” said Michael Westbrooks, manager of Dinkytown Ragstock, which is located on 14th Avenue S.E. “But the store offers a variety of different styles of clothing. People can style their own wardrobe.”
The store’s name might be deceiving to some; the clothing pad does not just sell rags, nor does it have a rags section. Although the store doesn’t specialize in any one fashion, Westbrooks said most of the clothes sold at the store are retro-style.
However, the store doesn’t seem to “remember the ’80s” like those late-night CD-selling infomercial hosts do. The Ö la mode fashions seem to jump right from the ’60s and ’70s to the ’90s, where fashions are pretty similar to those of the ’60s and ’70s.
Speaking of the ’80s, remember that show “Rags to Riches,” about those cute teen girls that used to sing their way through personal and school problems? Ironically, they mostly sang songs from the ’60s and ’70s.
— Nick Doty