Car Booting is The New Bingo
Young trendsetters are flocking to
car boot sales in an effort to stay cool and save money.
Car boot sales, like bingo halls, once attracted mainly an older crowd looking for an honest bargain or a jackpot of some kind. They rank alongside Morris dancing, fried breakfasts, and the bulldog as archetypically British (appearing to be quite shit or unhealthy). But these days blue rinses and conversations about the weather are being remixed with fat mullets and electro. Car booting is cool and you may be pleasantly surprised at the ease it took to get well kitted out on a budget that sticks two ‘Vs’ into the face of the credit crunch.
It may not be everyone’s cup of tea (and a cuppa is well cheap by the way) standing in a muddy field on a Sunday morning, but if you’re looking for some genuine eighties trash then you’ve got to get over your Saturday night haze and get out Sunday morning. Fashion waits for nobody and if you don’t want to be a victim or left behind then you’ve got to do the ground work. If you want the vintage vinyl, the true ‘tack’, the genuine Gary Numan garments then you’ve got to raise your game, put on your Wellingtons (red) and explore the treasure trove of trash.
The location is usually a field; it could be a field anywhere in Britain, but the contents of the field are pretty similar. I decided to investigate further by visiting the popular Saturday car boot close to Truro, Cornwall. (www.carbootscornwall.co.uk)
The steam from tea urns mingles with exhaust fumes, bacon sandwiches and small talk. Antique hunters scout for lost treasure, hoarders buy things they don’t need, penny pinchers poach, and ‘kitsch’ spotters expertly locate things - which may appear to be junk to the rest of us. However, there is also a new breed of animal prowling the wallpaper pasting tables, searching for those bad taste come avant-garde fashion items.
“Forget paying dollars for stuff at Topshop, which everybody else is wearing, this is where it’s at,” says photography student Rebecca Tantony (23) “You wouldn’t believe what you can find at places like this.” This point was echoed by the large presence of younger people looking around the stalls, albeit with a hangover and still wearing last nights’ clobber. Mighty Boosh fan Sam Eva (21) who says his best buy so far was a pair of Dolce & Gabbana shoes for £3.50: “ I used to wonder where I could buy cool clothes for little cash, but now I always visit charity shops, flea markets and car boots. Sometimes you don’t find much, but it evens out when you find a designer top or a pair of shiny leggings.”
The overwhelming success of the cult TV show: Mighty Boosh has arguably increased the amount of young people attending car boots. Self styled ‘Camden leisure pirate’ Vince Noir (aka Noel Fielding) is famed for his eccentric eighties-fuelled fashion sense and has become a fashion icon, or ‘emperor of dress’ for his many adoring fans.
The need to dress differently on an affordable student budget has altered the – once snobbish - perception of buying second hand clothes; thus deeming it fashionable. The booming interest in car booting has evolved from the charity shop scene. Kate Moss once admitted to finding gems hidden in charity shops and the term: ‘charity shop cool’ became a recognised style. However, the charity shops have become quite mainstream and are losing their touch, and their produce. To beat the credit crunch people are holding on to their unwanted items and pitching up in a field to sell the contents of their lofts and garages. What is junk to one person may be treasure to another, so people are making some money back on items that may once have been given to charity shops. The car boots are where it’s at; they are less well known, so you are guaranteed to find a bargain. The eighties fashion scene – recognised as being bad taste - consists of things like pink leggings and hideously patterned jumpers. If you want a large selection of bad taste, the cheap prices, the rejected Xmas pullover from auntie Nora then you’ve got to hit the second hand circuit. For the bohemian, the retro and the obscenely bad it has to be the car boot.
Apart from charity shops, lots of us can benefit from this credit crunch influence on car booting. Somewhere amongst VHS copies of Dirty Dancing, glass ponies, and Bart Simpson socks is something with your name on it, and it’s only 50p. So, why not stay in this Saturday night, set your digital alarm clock for 7am and get with the car-boot program: it’s where the cool kids go, you know, the ones you always ask for fashion tips.