Caleb Shaw and Anna Rojas collect vintage clothing, specifically apparel from the 1990s. As it turns out, a lot of other people like to collect and wear 90s-era clothing too.

“We started collecting vintage stuff, just shopping for ourselves at local Goodwills and thrift stores,” Rojas explained. “It started growing into what our family would like. Our family is big Bears fans or big Viking fans, and then it started growing to what other people would like. We started collecting more, and then we started posting online pieces that were available for sale in 2019, right before the pandemic hit.”

During the pandemic, online sales took off, and the young couple grew a local following, selling their wares at farmers markets or pop-up outdoor flea markets.

“We tested the waters there,” Shaw said, “and met a few people that were interested in vintage, and would ask us, ‘Do you guys have a store because this is super cool?’ We’re like, ‘No, sorry, this is it, we have two racks, and the rest is in our apartment.’”

Selling vintage clothing was something 26-year-old Shaw and 25-year-old Rojas did on the side. Rojas studied wildlife fisheries and aquaculture at Mississippi State, while Shaw pursued electrical engineering at UAH. Shaw was working as an engineer on government defense contracts when the clothing business took off.

“We had the business on the side doing it online, and then it was just something I was more passionate about,” Shaw recalled. “It’s something I really felt could go somewhere, and something I really cared about. So we just said, ‘Let’s do it.’”So they opened a vintage clothing shop, One Man’s Vintage, on Clinton Row in downtown Huntsville.

Shaw’s appreciation for vintage sportswear points back to his dad.

“My dad grew up in Chicago with Michael Jordan there in the ‘90s, so he would always show me old highlights. That’s how we bonded. That merged into my love of vintage and finding those pieces that reminded me of my dad, what he would like, and what he would wear,” said Shaw.

He believes one reason vintage and throwback apparel is so popular is it lets people travel back in time in their memories and reflect on good times in the past.

“We always get a lot of comments about, ‘Oh my God, I remember when I had that specific pennant,’ or ‘I remember when I saw that specific Batman movie’ and they’re like ‘Oh my God, this makes me feel like a kid again,’” Shaw said. “People who are like, ‘Oh, I used to have that same t-shirt when I was a little kid,’ or ‘I went to that specific concert, and it was my parents and my first concert together,’ things like that. I feel like the nostalgia really sets in.”

Rojas, too, appreciates the stories behind the clothing. One of her favorite stories begins with a fortunate find at a garage sale in Chicago. At first it didn’t look too promising.

“But a gut feeling told me to go towards the back of the garage, because sometimes they have a couple hidden things back there, and I found a Jeff Hamilton Phoenix Coyotes jacket, and it was kind of rare. It was back when the Phoenix Coyotes were just Phoenix; now, they’re Arizona. It was their old logo and a cool tribal print, and it was probably the craziest find I’ve ever seen, for a pretty low price as well.”

They posted about the rare find on Instagram, and fans went crazy for it. But the item wasn’t for sale. “We didn’t want to ship it,” Rojas said. “We wanted to hold onto it and display it here in the shop. We actually had a hockey player, who’s really familiar with hockey here in the Huntsville area. He was a college student and he said he saved up all his money to purchase our jacket.”

Another great find was a collection of Grateful Dead t-shirts from a man who followed the band on tour for about a decade and had t-shirts from every stop on the tour. “He had almost ten years, so that’s just a cool story, which I think goes back to vintage, having a story and having an emotional place in some people’s heart that we’re trying to connect to,” Rojas said.

“It’s more than just clothing. It’s the connection to it. We want people to come in and we want to sell things, but we also want the person to feel good about it and be like, ‘This is a shirt that I don’t ever want to get rid of because it means so much to me or reminds me of something.'”

One Man’s Vintage is located at 100 Jefferson St N Unit 147/148. For more information or to check out new arrivals to the shop, please visit www.onemansvintage.com.