Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.06.2010, Page 34

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07 — 2010
22
Suðurgata 41 · 101 Reykjavík · Tel. +354 530-2200 · www.natmus.is
The country’s largest
museum of cultural
history featuring a
permanent exhibition on
Iceland’s extraordinary
history from settlement
to present day.
Opening hours:
Summer
(May 1st – September 15th)
Daily 10–17
Winter
(September 16th – April 30th)
Daily except Mondays 11–17
National Museum of Iceland
New Spot
New Deals
If you bring this ad (yes, just rip it out) to our spankin’
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moment deal awaiting you. What it is? Not good to say
It’s a spur of the moment thing you know!
www.geysir.is
Pósthússtræti 9 Reykjavík Tel : 578 2020
www.icelandicbar. is info@icelandicbar. is
Icelandic home cooking with a modern flair
Shark
Lamb
Whale
Puffin
Wild game
and ALL the
icelandic
beers
Kitchen open
till midnight!
“I can go crazy over an old coat,”
laughs Helga Pálsdóttir. “If they fit and
they’re of a nice fabric, I can go nuts,”
she says, then pauses. “I will go nuts!”
At Red Cross stores, where Helga
works, going nuts for clothes pretty
much comes with the territory. “It’s a
little bit of this and that,” says Helga.
The charity organisation’s four shops in
Reykjavík are a dangerously addictive
intermittent reward system—you never
know when you’ll make your next thrill-
ing find, so you’re compelled to keep
searching.
TOP qUALITy TRASH
The Red Cross is bursting at the seams
with Iceland’s best quality refuse. Sig-
uringi Sigurjónsson dropped by after
work and put together a dapper golf
outfit. Inexpensive, yet classic, is what
Siguringi was looking for, and he found
it in spades.
Helga attributes the Red Cross
stores abundance of good quality cloth-
ing to Iceland’s former buying power.
“This has been a very affluent society
for many years, despite the banks’ col-
lapse,” Helga says. Even if designer
labels are your thing, Red Cross has
something for you—Helga name-drops
the labels Versace, Armani, and Dolce
& Gabbana.
CLOTHING GEOLOGy
A great thing about wearing used gar-
ments—designer and otherwise—is that
you probably won’t run into your style
doppelganger on the street (unless
you’re some sort of ‘hipster’), because
your clothes have already been through
the used clothing cycle.
Can we uncover past Icelandic
trends by looking at the strata of goods
deposited over time in Red Cross
stores, just like geologists look at the
strata of ash in soil to determine when a
volcano has been active? Most clothing
on Red Cross racks, for example, was
made somewhere else, often Norway
or the UK. Within the past few decades,
at least, Iceland has relied substantially
on imported clothes.
A welcome exception to that rule is
the bountiful knitwear on offer: cheap
socks, caps, gloves and, of course, the
Icelandic pattern sweater. Helga says
the Red Cross corrals its sweater popu-
lation into the small store at Laugavegur
12, because the sweaters are popular
with tourists who frequent the shop.
Many visitors to Iceland are un-
abashed about buying second-hand.
“You see a lot of foreign people coming
in here, people that are more used to
this where they come from. They’re not
shy,” Helga says.
Icelanders, on the other hand, can
be a little more cagey about sporting
used attire. “This type of second-hand
store is not something we are brought
up with,” Helga says. “This is new for
us. People aren’t really used to second-
hand,” Helga says.
Indeed, it seems second-hand
clothes are a relatively new thing for
Icelanders. The Red Cross’s first shop,
the small space at Laugavegur 12, has
only been around for ten years, and the
Hlemmur location at Laugavegur 116
has only been around for two.
Anna María Ingveldur Larsen,
a young mother shopping with her
daughter at the Red Cross, agrees.
“Some people think it’s weird,” she says
of buying there. “They think it’s just for
poor people.” She remembers when
she was new to Red Cross shopping,
not long ago. “I thought it was just crap
here, but it’s not.”
BOHEMIAN REvOLUTION
Siguringi finds that feelings toward
second-hand clothing vary depending
on where you’re from. People who live
around downtown Reykjavík “are more
citizens of the world,” he says, “but if
you go outside of this area, you might
run into people who don’t do this kind
of shopping.”
“They’re quaint,” Helga says of a
certain species of Red-Cross-shopping
downtowners. To stereotype for a mo-
ment, these people “prefer to walk.
They may have a more healthy lifestyle,”
and they’re “arty,” environmentally con-
scious people. Not such a bad reputa-
tion to have.
But the second-hand trend seems
to be catching on more broadly. Red
Cross’s revenues have been increas-
ing steadily, Helga says. The people of
Reykjavík are gaining respect for old
things, especially after the economic
crash. Fittingly, the newest Red Cross
store in Reykjavík is based in an old
Kaupthing bank building.
A PENNy SAvEd IS A PENNy
EARNEd
The money the Red Cross earns goes
to causes around the world. Helga
tells me that four Reykjavík Red Cross
stores, alone, provide aid to 6.000 or-
phans in Malawi, many of whose par-
ents have died of AIDS.
The charity also helps local peo-
ple. The clothes that aren’t bought up
go into the back room, where every
Wednesday between 10:00 and 14:00
people can pick up two full bags for
free.
“Not only are you doing a good
deed, because you know the money is
going to be spent on some well-worth-
it cause, but you’re also preventing this
huge consumption. This is like recy-
cling. We’re preserving energy, which
should be so Icelandic,” says Helga.
Right now, Helga is helping give
the Red Cross a bit of a makeover. “We
want to look more like a regular shop,”
she says—a regular shop that just hap-
pens to get amazing, good quality
clothes in all the time, and sells them
really cheap. “We’re just hoping that
by fixing the place up we’ll get more
people to come in and buy.”
Shopping | Second-hand
Red Cross Revolution
Second-hand clothing shops reinvent Reykjavík style
Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!
Faux fur coats: about 8.000 ISK
Icelandic pattern sweaters:
about 4.000 ISK
A black men’s tuxedo: 8.000 ISK
Like-new handmade socks and
mittens: 600 to 2.500 ISK
One pair suede short overalls with
heart-shaped pockets: 3.000 ISK
One red and navy checked skinny tie:
600 ISK
Lots of sexy lady lingerie:
from about 800 ISK
STEPHANIE ORFORd
JULIA STAPLES