Come Vintage Decor Shopping With Me! Let’s Find Some Antique Decor & Thrifted Treasures
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Maybe it's just me, but I think that shopping for antique decor and vintage style treasures is a remedy for just about anything.
If you're feeling down, go antiquing.
If you're bored, go antiquing.
If you find yourself in a perpetual state of low-grade panic because the world is on fire—go antiquing.
A vintage store is just a wonderful place to escape when everything around you is feeling black and white and sepia, and you just want a little color and fun.
So in this post, I'm taking you over the rainbow with me and into a magical vintage mall here in Seattle as I shop for decor for my apartment. And maybe together we can shake off some anxiety and get some decor ideas and inspiration and visit a little slice of the world that doesn't feel like the apocalypse is nigh. 🙃
Now let's go to the Fremont Vintage Mall and see what we find!
Would you rather watch than read? Here’s the video! ↓
The Fremont Vintage Mall really does feel like the perfect escape from a world that feels like it's getting drained of its color more and more each day. So if you're ever around, I highly recommend checking it out. Fremont is one of the coolest and cutest neighborhoods in the Emerald City of Seattle, and it's the perfect spot for the technicolor world that is the Fremont Vintage Mall.
You would never be able to tell from the outside, but this place is quite huge and filled with all kinds of twists and turns and caverns of pretty things, cool things, weird things—just about every kind of thing you could imagine is in this shop. Vintage decor, clothing, jewelry, toys, records—you’re bound to find something, even if it’s just a moment of childhood nostalgia.
Man, please take me back to the My Little Pony days of my youth. We’ve all seen better days, haven’t we, ponies?
But we aren’t here to reminisce about childhood. We’re here to find decor!
And right near the entrance, the very first section of the shop I encountered was filled with dark, witchy things that kind of made me feel like the store scanned my brain and then this section just materialized based on the witchy side of my personal taste. I couldn’t believe it, really.
There were mystical little trinkets, black cats and framed illusions, little oddities and whimsigoth touches…
Whether you're a good witch or a bad witch or any witch in between, this stuff covered the spectrum of witchy things; rose quartz, mermaids, a black skull lamp, and a Medusa with covered eyes so she unfortunately won’t be turning any unsavory men to stone.
There were all kinds of interesting magical finds, and I frankly had to exhibit a tremendous amount of self-restraint here because I could have bought this whole section. I’m just trying not to indulge in buying more knickknacks right now, you know?
When I was finally able to tear myself away from this first section without grabbing any witchy trinkets, I moved along in my quest to find decor for my apartment.
And seeing as how music is one of the central themes to my apartment decor style, along with touches of other niche fandoms of mine like One Piece and Death Note, another perfect-for-Steffi thing about Fremont Vintage Mall is it has tons of music and pop culture stuff everywhere.
If you're a music, TV, and/or movie lover, this place would be your playground!
I mean, the fact that I was able to find Laura Palmer, Agent Cooper, and the Twin Peaks welcome sign as quickly as I did should be very telling. This is clearly a wonderful place for anyone who is a part of a cult fandom.
And as a Twin Peaks lover myself—as well as being from Snoqualmie, Washington, where Twin Peaks is set—I really couldn't believe how easy it was to find these. Once again, it felt like the shop read my mind and made something I love materialize in front of me.
But I'd say the real star of Fremont Vintage Mall is music, with Nirvana leading the charge from all fronts.
Seriously, just about everywhere you look in this entire shop, you'll encounter the haunting eyes of Kurt Cobain watching as you sift through the dusty treasures over which he presides.
Man, Twin Peaks, Nirvana… What's next? Is someone going to throw salmon over the counter? This place is unabashedly Seattle, and I love it.
Also in the music vein, I found these really cool prints, which look like paint sample interpretations of various album covers.
What a cool idea—distilling an album cover down to its colors. You can make a cool gallery wall out of something like this—just pick out the ones that represent your favorite albums, arrange them on a wall, and you'll end up with a stylish display that's personal to you and the music you love.
You could even DIY something like this in Canva! Just find an album you love, drag the image into Canva, and use the eyedrop tool to grab some colors from the album art. Once complete, you can get it printed, and you'll have your own custom piece of wall art. Could be a fun project! (To see what this could look like, watch the video version of this post.)
Anyway, I was blown away by the sheer vastness of the selection of music-related prints in this place. I spent a crazy amount of time flipping through them.
And it wasn't just music and pop culture—they had a print for just about everything, like queer-coded fairies and Art Nouveau cigarette ads that make smoking look way more beautiful than they should…
Something about this one spoke to me—probably because it's so relatable. I'm tired too, girl.
I also thought this one was beautiful—although terrifying, in my opinion…
(Hot take: I hate butterflies. All bugs scare the shit out of me, and butterflies are the ultimate con artists. They trick you with their colorful wings into overlooking the fact that underneath that flagrant deception is a scary, gross bug. Their wings are nothing but propaganda. Wake up, people! 😏)
Moving along, one thing I really loved in Fremont Vintage Mall was their lighting selection. And I think my favorite piece in the store was this one:
I probably loved this one mainly due to the fact that I'm such a sucker for gold flowers, but also because of its '70s vibes. I love a good 70’s boho flower moment. I honestly thought about buying this, even though I'm not really sure about doing a hanging light and dealing with the wiring. But I don't know.
So I was thinking… maybe instead of hanging it in the center of the room, it could drop down here and be a part of the styling next to my media console:
This way, the wiring could plug in behind the TV, and there would be plenty of items to cover some of it. I think it could look really good!
But ultimately, I wasn't in the frame of mind to make such a big decision. That's a design commitment I just wasn't ready to make.
So I continued to browse, hoping something would spark my interest and fit the needs of my apartment.
Then these little cups caught my eye:
I know I said I’d resist the knick-knacks, but there was something about these. Honestly, it’s probably the gold floral design—because that’s my thing—but I just knew I wanted them.
And one thing you can do when you’re curious about a vintage item you found and you want to know more about it is you can take a photo, then do a Google image search with it, and you’ll likely be able to figure out the time period, the artist or brand, and other interesting tidbits about it. After doing that with these cups, I figured out they’re mid-century modern pieces from the ’60s, from a Japanese tableware line called Nazco del Coronado, which is associated with the occupied Japan period in the post-war era. So you can get some pretty cool info from a simple Google Images search!
Anyway, at five bucks a cup, I figured there was zero reason not to get these. So I took them to the register to be held for me as I continued my vintage voyage.
As I continued shopping, I was definitely keeping my eyes peeled for good wall art, which this shop had a lot of.
Like, look at this little pastel goth piece:
My last YouTube video was about pastel goth decor, and here it was, out in the wild!
Also, major respect to this wall dominated by cat art:
Then I found this mirror. I really loved this piece.
And yes, it has my go-to gold flower design. I know. But it’s just such an iconic ’70s and ’80s style mirror. It’s beautifully retro! And it makes me think of Ariana Danielson’s decor, with her stunning dark boho glam style. Her space is one of my favorites, and it definitely aligns with my personal style in a lot of ways.
If I bought this mirror, I think it could possibly go here:
By this time it had been close to 3 hours since I landed in this magical world, and it had taken a tremendous amount of focused brain power, an open heart, and some fierce courage for me to make it this far. I mean, I’m a homebody, and I get tired and frankly quite anxious when I’m out in the world for too long.
I was feeling my cozy couch at home call out to me—and appropriately, so was this blanket:
It felt like it would be a betrayal to my personal style if I didn’t get it, you know? Golden black flowers. ’70s vibes. Super soft. It belongs to me.
