When Sparking Joy Turns Into a Five Alarm Fire

On Immigration, Identity and Vintage by Maria Barraco

Dress for the job you want…

My guest writer today is vintage collector and dealer Maria Barraco, founder of Animal Vintage. Over the years we have joked about growing up as first generation immigrant kids of Latin American moms in the 80’s. Latinx stories need to be told, and her tale of finding herself amidst piles of thrifted clothing is gorgeous. She is an incredible and hilarious writer and in honor of #hispanichertitagemonth I asked if I could share her essay here, you can follow here and to read part 2 you can follow her on her nascent Substack here.

Last night as I was driving home covered in moth shit, I realized that this wasn't the first time I’d been covered in insect residue. Two years ago in Los Angeles, I was cleaning out a storage unit I’d just bought from a retired vintage dealer friend. She had built in shelves in her unit and just as I was reaching the top shelf to pull a purse down, a cascade of what looked like sunflower seeds rained on my head. I couldn’t figure out what sunflower seeds would be doing up there, when I realized it was some sort of petrified mystery shit. Luckily I was wearing my respirator. 

I just paid $30K to get showered by mystery poo, a bargain in the world of vintage shopping, considering there was Chanel and Issey Miyake amongst the turds. This is the ongoing theme in my life, finding treasures amongst the garbage. The theme however, had been turning into a compulsion. This compulsion has been perfected over a course of decades, and last night it peaked with a single tear rolling down my dirt-covered face. Finally, I gathered, it was time to figure out who I was without the weight of all this stuff. I was done being covered in shit. 

If you’re reading this and you don't know me, let me give you a little background. I have been a vintage dealer and collector for 30 years, mostly under the name Animal Vintage. This name was given to me by my friend Ali, also a collector. I showed up at his apartment one morning, bleary eyed after driving back from an auction in upstate New York to show him an oilcloth chintz cocoon coat I had purchased. “You’re an animal,” he said. We both laughed. 

I bought my first piece of vintage clothing when I was a seventeen year old misfit sneaking into nightclubs in Miami Beach. This was the mid 90’s and South Beach was at its peak. I didn’t have a fake ID so I’d go to thrift stores and buy something outlandish. We were at the height of the velvet rope phenomenon and the doormen loved anyone serving a look, especially the famed Gilbert Stafford. If you could get past Gilbert’s ruthless scrutiny and not get ID’ed, you were golden.  That’s how much power a good outfit has.

“Gilbert Stafford was a nattily dressed dandy who ruled the ropes from South Beach to New York and beyond. At his 2010 memorial, it was noted that Stafford could make people feel good about not getting in.” -Patrick McMullan for the NY Times

I wish I could tell you that this is where it all began, but my affinity for all things old and used goes further back, I am an immigrant. When I was five years old, I came to South Florida from Uruguay with my mom, stepfather and grandparents. I hate to admit the age old cliché, but my mom was a cleaning lady named Maria. She worked for different families during the week, but two were really wealthy. They were constantly giving her bags of things they didn’t find use for anymore. Charity, if you will. My grandmother and aunts, who had arrived earlier, were also cleaning ladies. They too received an ongoing stream of donations from their “patrones”. Once a week all the women would gather at my grandmother’s house with all of their loot and engage in a giant exchange of goods. The minute the women's clothing started getting pulled out of bags, I felt electricity coursing through my body. 

My favorite bags all came from Mrs. Jacobson. She was a classy older lady married to Dr. Jacobson. They were generous with their giveaways and he always sent trousers that were way too small for my grandpa. My grandmother never refused them though, thinking that if she said "no” to these gifts the Jacobson’s might call immigration on them.  Mrs. Jacobson loved a St. John sweater set and bought new ones every fall. We got her collections from the previous season along with all her size 6 narrow Ferragamo flats with the grosgrain ribbon and gold hardware.  All the women in my family had swollen cleaning lady feet, so me and my cousins got the Ferragamos to play dress up with. 

When I was wearing this rich white woman’s clothes, I was no longer the undocumented and anxious child of a cleaning lady. I was a wealthy blonde pageant queen without a care in the world, waving to the peasants in the stands. I was the poster girl for carefree shopping sprees with my American Express card. I put those Ferragamos on and I could buy my mom a house, I could pass the Grey Poupon. Anything was possible in the right ply of cashmere. 

It would be years before I could articulate the myriad of ways that escapism, being undocumented, the fantasy of wealth, the shame of poverty, capitalism, classism and addiction all swirled together in a noxious sludge that would stain all the edges of my life. Its fingerprint was on everything I had ever consumed. I am still untangling the jumble of a mess today. I am still covered in shit.

As the years went on, some families dropped off the cleaning rosters and were replaced by new ones. New families meant new kinds of goods getting donated. When I was about twelve, my mom started cleaning for a drug dealer. She would work for him and his family for years, not realizing what he did for a living until she found him turning blue from an overdose one afternoon. Never get high on your own supply. I should’ve taken notes.

The drug dealer, let’s call him Mr. A, was married to a stunning younger woman who shopped like an olympic champion. Her charitable donations to our family were numerous and included unopened Clinique cosmetics, #ID outfits and Z.Cavaricci pants that had only been used once or twice. These were all the rage in my middle school and I had new ones every week thanks to Mrs. A’s compulsive shopping habit. I didn’t realize it then, but Mrs. A really did have a catastrophic shopping addiction that would eat through hundreds of thousands of dollars and ultimately lead to her demise. 

P.S. I can’t believe these were the pants I was crying over. AC Slater on 80’s TV hit “Saved by the Bell”

Mrs. A’s husband had to sell a lot of cocaine to keep up with her habit. When he started to take her credit cards away, she started to act like a “loca”, my mom told my aunts. The chisme was that Mrs. A started having an affair with her doctor to spite Mr. A. She got pregnant and had an abortion that had some complications. My mom had to stay overnight with her at a hotel while she recovered. “Nunca mas!” My mother would say, but she always went back.  To me, Mrs. A was living the American dream. I wanted to be just like her. 

After resuscitating Mr.A, my mom had finally had enough. The last thing she needed was the police or La migra sniffing around. She was done cleaning white people’s mugre.  She went to beauty school to learn how to do nails and my wardrobe suffered. No more bags of clothes.  “They give you “mal de ojo” anyway”, my mom would say. Without Mrs. A’s weekly contributions, I was forced to suffer through the unimaginable, the K-Mart layaway plan. Overnight, my anxiety soared and I cried when I got dressed. All the kids at school would know that I was poor. My stock would plummet. I would be ridiculed. I wouldn’t fit in and then everyone would know my family was undocumented. It would all be my fault.

All this, of course, was not true. However, nobody told me any differently. All of my life, my entire family had warned me about getting in trouble, not standing out, assimilating. The slightest infraction and my entire family would get ripped apart. And so, I wore my K-Mart clothes and kept my head down. This didn’t last very long though, as rebelling and experimentation are hallmarks of American teenage life. 

When I was a junior in high school I discovered the nightlife: a dark, seedy underworld with no adult supervision and no immigration laws. It was a place where drugs, sex, and reckless abandon were encouraged. I was home. I was too scared to do drugs so I drank 40s of Schlitz and whatever else I could find. I loved the warm and calming effect it had on my hyper vigilant mind. Lost in the giant crowd of sweaty, eye rolling kids I finally felt normal. We were outlaws, dressed in JNCO pants that mopped the floor, a ring of filth forming on the legs when they couldn’t absorb any more. It was in these places that I noticed kids wearing butterfly collar shirts that I had seen my mom wearing in pictures from the 70s. The guys all wore fitted Adidas tees with ring collars and stripes down the arms. I didn’t know what this style was called, but I liked it. One night I ran into my friend’s friend, Alex. He was wearing a butterfly collar shirt with an incredible swirly print. I asked him where he got it and he told me “Red, White and Blue.” This was before Apple Maps. I had to get the Yellow Pages out, a massive biblical sized book that held the phone number of every business in Miami Dade County. I called and got directions. I was on my way.

As soon as I stepped foot into the thrift store, I felt that same electric jolt I got when I was rifling through Mrs. Jacobson’s bags of discarded cashmere. I was about to win big, I was about to get over it.  I was going to fit in and stand out at the same time. My mind would be enveloped in that warm and fuzzy hug of happiness. All these things for $3! And half price on Wednesdays! Something in my brain had loosened up, like unzipping your pants after a big dinner. A sense of relief. Somewhere in this store, in this concept, lay a future. A future filled with riches, treasures and solutions; but also problems…