Remember the wacky days of the ’90s and early 2000s, when decor and clothing were meant to be as loud as possible and gimmicky characters were all over clothes? Annie Schisler certainly does, and misses it, which is why she and her partner Doug Valeri opened Top Shelf Vintage Co., a secondhand clothing shop in Pawtucket that embodies the silliness of earlier times.
The shop’s clothing selection spans from the 1970s to the early aughts, as Valeri and Schisler consider items vintage if they’re at least twenty years old. Relics around the store invite customers to reminisce on times when Super Mario Kart was a shiny new game and Converse sneakers were known as Chuck Taylors or just Chucks — you know, the good ol’ days.
“When people walk in, they get hit with their past, which is really special,” Schisler says. “Getting to stir up some nostalgia and allow people to forget about the other stuff in their life and think about the memory the store is evoking is one of the coolest parts of the job.”
While pulling up for our interview, I found Schisler dumpster-diving through boxes of discarded items a few storefronts down. It’s a hobby she’s always enjoyed. In fact, her early years of buying and selling secondhand to Florida classmates foretold her future as a secondhand shop owner…