VIEW THIS PAGE Walking into I Love SF’s East District store is like wandering into the giant closet of a rich hippie during the 1970s — or a well-kept vintage clothing shop in San Francisco’s famous Haight-Ashbury district, the 1960s counterculture haven-turned-upscale bohemian shopping district. All that is missing is the patchouli incense.
The store’s hardwood floors are lined with rows of cowboy boots and racks are hung with buttery soft vintage leather jackets in burnished shades of cinnamon, goldenrod, rich black and earthy brown. Other racks hold denim jackets in dozens of shades of blue and dresses in eye-popping 1960s and 1970s prints; vintage Levi’s jeans are heaped high on a table in a velvety, indigo mound. Leather satchels, long golden necklaces with medallion pendants and chunky enameled bangles wait to complete your retro look.
“I opened the store because of my own interest in vintage clothing. I love mixing and matching it,” says Lin Chia-hui (林佳慧), who started collecting secondhand clothes in high school. Lin founded I Love SF in 1999 with a small storefront and a stand in Ximending. The store still has a branch in the area’s trendy Shinjuku Plaza shopping center that specializes in vintage purses, including items from Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuitton.
I Love SF’s Chinese name, Jiu Jin Shan (舊金衫), is a pun on the Mandarin for “San Francisco” (舊金山) and literally translates into “old gold shirt.” More accurately, the name means “old clothing treasure.” While hunting down and wearing secondhand clothing is not the full-blown trend in Taiwan that it is in the US, Hui says it still enjoys a small but devoted group of acolytes.
“Our customers range from teenagers to grandpas. There are students and doctors. We have older customers who studied abroad when they were students and when they see some of the items in our store, it makes them nostalgic,” says Lin. “I’ve had customers tell me that when they were younger they couldn’t afford a purse, and then they found the exact same item in my store.”
Most of I Love SF’s vintage items are imported from the US, where Hui’s buyers are mostly college students who scour thrift stores, flea markets and warehouses full of dead stock. Other items come from Europe or Japan. On occasion, older residents in the neighborhood will drop by the store with a bag full of cast-offs from their closet for Hui to pick from — one person’s junk becoming someone else’s treasure.
I Love SF sells clothing from the 1950s to the 1980s, with an emphasis on the last two decades, along with new, vintage-inspired items. The majority of the store’s customers (and its employees) prefer to mix-and-match their finds instead of recreating a period look. Hui and her staff occasionally alter clothing, shortening hemlines or taking in waists to update a piece. I Love SF also carries a line of simple dresses made from colorful vintage knit fabric; their wide, elasticized tops mean they can be worn as a flowing strapless sundress or a long, gypsy-style skirt. Most accessories in the store are new but are selected for their retro look: golden earrings with large rhinestones fit right in with the current trend for 1980s-inspired items, while chunky enameled bangles resemble pricey Bakelite pieces from the 1940s and 1950s. Leather jackets are I Love SF’s most popular items and are sorted by style, including bomber jackets and blazers. The store offers free alterations for leather clothing; service fees of NT$100 to NT$300 are charged for work on other items.
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