Two things are inevitable in life for all people. For me, one of them is shopping in vintage and thrift stores. I am looking for clothes not just for me to wear, but to add to my stock of vintage items to use for shows and study. I look for vintage items all over the place, and almost every trip I take I will combine the fun with some vintage store action. That, of course, makes the trip deductible on my taxes. You cannot blame me for thinking ahead.

This past weekend I took off for points North: Washington, DC and Baltimore. I have lots of friends from school in the DC area, most of them working as lawyers for people on the Hill or in the journalism trade. This trip, however, was two-fold. I went to the National Gallery of Art, one of my favorite places to just go and be surrounded by paintings, and then headed off to U Street, in Adams Morgan, to hunt for vintage clothes.

The NGA has established a loan deal with the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA, where they will loan each other works of art that ordinarily would not travel save for big exhibitions (and sometimes not even then). This time the loan from West to East. The Norton Simon sent Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Boy in Fancy Dress (“Titus”) circa 1655. It is a lovely little work—radiant, the face on the canvas just glows. The tragedy is that at some point in the paintings conservation history it looks like the canvas has been relined. With relining a painting is put face down (i.e. paint surface down) on a powerful vacuum table and the old canvas is slowly removed almost down to the paint layer and a new canvas is reapplied. The problem is that this process flattens the paint so that any brush strokes are now just flat. There is something about Rembrandt’s paintings of this period that have a three-dimensional aspect to them. The Gallery has put “Titus” in the same room as the 1659 Self-Portrait that they own. You can see the differences that the conservation process has created between the two paintings. The nose in the Self-Portrait is amazing, in that you can see every brush stroke and the paint is very thick in parts. When you then look at the “Titus” you can tell in the details of the costume where the paint did what it does in the Self-Portrait. Still, what an amazing painting it truly is. It is on display until the beginning of September. So, why is it called “Titus,” you ask? When it was purchased by Norton Simon in the 1960s it was thought to be a portrait of the artist’s son Titus. Titus was born in 1641, so he would have been fourteen when the painting was done (the Norton Simon is very generous in its date range for the painting, dating it between 1645-1650—which is just a little too early as a comparison between it and the paintings in the NGA collection show), and this is most certainly not a fourteen year old boy. Plus, the two known portraits of Titus by Rembrandt, in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, do not match up with the young boy in this painting.

Enough about that. It is a fantastic painting, and I will be seeing him again in a couple of weeks when I head back up to Baltimore.

Hunting for vintage clothes! It is harder and harder to find quality, inexpensive, vintage clothes these days in stores. They are out there, but you have to be patient and look and hunt and look. What defines vintage? Well, for me vintage is pre-1965 (the year I was born). Yes there is eBay, and I buy on eBay a whole lot. But there is something about engaging in the hunt and spending the day in dusty antique malls and trendy vintage stores. When I first started seriously buying vintage in the late 80s I could go up to Dupont Circle in DC and go nuts. I also used to be able to get good stuff in the thrift stores around here. Now kids think that the late 60s, 70s, and (help me) 80s are vintage. I did score a couple of nice dresses on 18th Street and U in Adams Morgan, and they do have more, so I will keep Meeps on my list. But so many of the stores I used to shop in are gone, victims of higher and higher rents (don’t I know from THAT!), and changes in buying habits. Plus, the good stuff from the old days is getting harder to find as museums and theaters are buying for their use.

What do I do with all of the vintage items I own? To be honest, I rent them out for shows. I only buy good stuff, and am very careful about buying online. I inspect seams and closures and zippers and the like to make sure that if I am paying $65.00 for a dress that it is worth it. Most of the vintage items in “Strange Fruit” were mine, and I rented them to Long Leaf for the production. Why do I rent them? Well, they do have to pay for themselves. I pay, on average, $40.00 to $100.00 for a dress. Then I clean it, strengthen seams, replace closures, and I store it. All of this costs money—and while the initial purchase, cleaning, and supplies may be tax deductible, the dress has to make back its initial investment. It takes a dress about four rentals to make back its initial investment. I do not rent them that frequently, so it may take a little while for an item to pay for itself. Plus, I rent so I can buy more items! I do not have an unlimited cash flow, I work for the State of North Carolina full time, so if I want to support my interests they have to be able to help with the trip.


It is fun going to vintage stores. I have a blast making a day of it—list in one hand, bottle of water in the other, and the ATM card tucked safely away in the shirt pocket. The card whispers “use me wisely…”

How does this work for my taxes? Well, I itemize. I like to travel and I take every legal deduction I can. So, if going to vintage stores in DC, like going to the fabric store in Virginia Beach, make those trips deductible, I am all for it. I keep every receipt I get through the month, even from the grocery store. At the end of the month I go through them all and keep what I can deduct and get rid of what I cannot. Then I photocopy the ones I can, since they fade and get dark over time. I have a filing folder with slots labeled “Books, Magazines, and Media,” “Sewing supplies, business supplies,” and the like. All of the copies get filed in there, stapled together by the month. That way, come 1 January I can just hand it all to my Mother, who is a certified tax person. Then I just have to wait for all of the W-2s…

I hope people had a super holiday!