• the217
• Life
• Sara Hudson

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Above hangers of leather jackets, those short black jackets that punk boys, who chain smoke and consume strange combinations of drugs and music wear, above dented and wrinkled boots and sandals lined up along the wall, above old 7" records used to mark the sizes of pants hanging on a rack, there is a black sweater-dress adorning the wall.

The front is decorated with patches of metallic silver and maroon, pieced together from tiny squares of color. The squares look like scales on the tail of some gaudy mermaid, and the dress screams nostalgically for the '80s, as loudly as Cindy Lauper's out of tune voice. Someone once was paid to make the dress, back when the design was at the height of fashion, and someone once bought it. But once the silly trend died, the sweater might have changed hands or been stashed away.

Sara Hudson, who owns a second-hand vintage clothing store, found it in a thrift store in Chicago earlier this year.

"It sat in my closet for a while because I considered keeping it. That's how much I liked it," she said, admiring the dress. "But then I knew I'd never really wear it."

So Hudson brought it into her store, Dandelion on 9 E. Taylor St. in Champaign, along with thousands of other dresses, jackets, blazers, pants, hats, sunglasses, scarves, shoes and countless other items. It now hangs opposite the cash register where she can see it.

"I can still love it," she said.

She pointed to another favorite - a fitted Asian-print shirt with a mandarin collar, which she bought on a trip to St. Louis. Silky blue, the shirt stood out on the rack among more muted colors, like red and yellow. In the busy evening of the next day, someone was already buying it. "Now it's going away to a new home," Hudson said, radiant and smiling, now able to let go of even favorites after opening the store 13 years ago.

Petite with bleached, straight hair, she is the perfect model for Dandelion's mix of vintage and near-modern, dressed in a white front-tie fitted jacket with cutwork, over a black dress with a pleated bottom, with flared jeans and heels. Except for her shoes, she wears second-hand clothes.

"I buy new shoes," she says. "My feet are finicky. I have to buy wider shoes than most of the ones in here because people's feet were very narrow back then."

Many of the clothes in the store run small too, she says, especially the older pieces. Large blouses and dresses with massive shoulder pads and shapeless bodices from the last 30 years, however, are still a frequent sight at the store. Hudson recently got a hold of vintage dresses in sizes as large as 22 and a half - an unusual find.

"But back then that's equivalent to like (the modern sizes) 11 or 12," she explained.

Once a week, usually on Wednesdays, Hudson travels in search of more clothes at estate sales, auctions, and thrift stores, and once a month she travels further away, to Chicago, St. Louis, and everywhere in-between, returning with "at least a car-full crammed in the back."

"(There's never) a shortage," she says laughing.

Dandelion is bursting; there are racks of clothes in the dressing rooms, clothes on the walls, in plastic organizers, and in every corner of the store. She also has a storage space stuffed with clothes, and then there's her and her husband's house.

"The basement is full. The attic is full," she said.

Dandelion used to be a smaller store on Chester Street. After Hudson left San Francisco, where she was unhappy working at a non-profit advertising agency, she came to Champaign, her college town, and borrowed $800 to pay for her first store.

"I then paid that back within a month. And I didn't have some huge savings account," she said. "I didn't have much money."

Eventually the cramped shop on Chester Street caught the attention of her current landlords who offered to her what used to be a photographer's studio.

"When we moved in, the floors were cement and the walls were all gray-black," she remembered. "There were no lights on the ceiling."

Now, the walls are an off-yellow - a mix between yellow and green - and the ceilings are white. The store glows with the white light of many lamps. But Dandelion is again beginning to seem too small to Hudson.

"This seemed huge back then," she said. "Now (it's) crowded and I'm waiting for the next landlords to come in and ask me if I want to move."