Leann Trowbridge is co-owner of Meeps, a small, popular Adams Morgan vintage clothing store that is stuffed full of funky men’s and women’s clothes and accessories. Meeps opened in 1992, but Trowbridge and Danni Shirkey took it over in 2001.
Why did you decide to buy the store?
We had been working at a clothing boutique in D.C., and we just heard that they wanted to sell it. We both liked the store a lot and had been shoppers. I was also designing clothes a lot then, and I still do it as much as I can now.
How do you find the clothes for the store?
All sorts of different ways. We have some people who buy for us. People call us a lot when they have an estate sale. We also travel around and go to secondhand shops and flea markets. I have a sister who lives in North Carolina, and we find nice stuff there. We try to stay far away from New York, because there are so many people looking for things.
D.C. is such a conservative town when it comes to fashion. Do you ever find anything here?
I think people maybe had wilder wardrobes in the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s than they do now. … A lot of the crazy things we find still have the tags on them. So someone wanted to wear it — they had the impulse to buy it. Actually around here, people have interesting wardrobes. We went to this one woman’s house, and she said, oh yeah, my great-aunt wore this to Teddy Roosevelt’s ball
