A Shortcut to Melrose

Red-hot, Los Angeles-based vintage store Wasteland has just launched https://www.thewasteland.com. The Web site offers for sale vintage jackets, shirts, pants, denim and accessories for men and women, home furnishings, and some new designs from Rocket Baby and Smashing Grandpa.

The uncanny fashion sense of Wasteland’s colorful store personnel has translated well into cyberspace. All the faux fur coats, cashmere and mohair sweaters, bowling and Aloha shirts you’d expect to find on Melrose can now be found on the Web. The selection is updated five days a week, and, thankfully, the minute an item is purchased, it is removed from view. Be sure to check out the collector’s guide, which gives a decade-by-decade history of postwar vintage couture.

Another cool vintage clothing site spawned from a local store is https://www.paperbagp.com. Operated by West Hollywood’s Paper Bag Princess, the items displayed are mostly high-end (Gucci, Diane Von Furstenberg, Pucci and Missoni). You can’t buy directly over the Internet, but you can e-mail or call the store to place an order. Our favorite section of the site shows how to incorporate vintage fashions into current fashion trends--lots of pics for guys and gals. There’s also a dictionary of fashion designers. Store owner Elizabeth Mason is author of “The Rag Street Journal,” a guide to thrift- and consignment-store shopping across the United States and Canada.