For modern and vintage finds, look no further than your friends’ closet.
This Sunday, the community support group Friends of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum will hold its Your Friends’ Closet Sale in the LSU AgCenter 4-H Mini Farm. The sale will feature gently worn vintage and modern clothes, shoes, jewelry and other accessories for men, women and children. All items come straight out of Baton Rouge closets.
The sale will be departmental and set up like a neighborhood clothing store. Each rack will have a sign with sizes, so customers won’t have to rake through them to find what they’re looking for.
Jeanne Triche, manager of the sale and board member of the Friends of LSU Textile and Costume Museum, said these sales help keep the museum up and running.
The Your Friends’ Closet Sale, in particular, was a way to capitalize on the prominence of local vintage boutiques and thrift stores.
“This is our 10th year that we’ve done it,” Triche said. “We just thought that a lot of the resale shops and vintage clothing were popular, and we could raise money for our museum that way.”
Triche said many people in town clean out their closets every season, and for the sale, the Friends of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum try to take full advantage of that.
However, with all the resale stores around town, there is stiff competition when it comes to the trend of cheap vintage clothing, Triche said.
Because the sale is only for one day and local stores are open all year, Triche said it’s important to gain an edge, and one way is pricing. Triche said the sale’s prices are probably lower than anywhere else.
“The public likes to donate clothes instead of just throwing them away,” Triche said. “We’re passing our clothing on to someone else for nothing hardly.”
Another way to gain an edge is through the Friends of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum’s partnership with Mignon Faget, a popular New Orleans-based jewelry store.
Artist Mignon Faget was a textile designer, and the store collects items for the Friends of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum all year, including items for the sale.
Triche said the partnership began three years ago through a friend who worked retail at Mignon Faget. The store now helps the group advertise and promote the sale. The group itself first began the sale with each individual’s own personal clothing and donations, and it grew from there.
Now the sale is more than closet-cleaning donations among friends, as LSU Textile and Costume Museum curator Pam Vinci said the sale helps keep the museum lights on.
“It’s their money that allows for the museum to have an alarm system and to have sensory lighting,” Vinci said. “So when there’s no one and no movement in the gallery, the case lights go off to protect the garments from extreme light exposure.”
Vinci said the money also helps purchase useful tools for museum exhibitions, such as paint, text boards and frames.
Some textiles in the museum are more than 200 years old and need special storage. Vinci said she uses the proceeds from the sale for conservation materials to preserve these important garments because they are a part of history.
This year it will feature a costume rack for Halloween and an LSU-themed purple and gold clothing rack, Vinci said.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Emily Brauner

Friends of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum will hold its Your Friends’ Closet Sale on Sunday, Oct. 11 in the LSU AgCenter 4-H Mini Farm in order to raise money for the museum.