This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.

Like most of you reading this, I spend a lot of time online. Some of that time can truly be called work; the rest of it is spent looking at Instagram Reels about viral Kool-Aid Pineapple sales in the Southern United States and watching Hunter Biden bloom as a Twitter power user. Online is a great place to shop. Of course, I would prefer an expertly arranged retail store with the perfect in-house scent, soundtrack, and cool employees who are attentive but not all over you, but in 2026, those are few and far between. I am mostly interested in vintage, whether it be yet another pair of orange-tab Levi’s 505s, deadstock Made in USA Converse Chuck Taylors, or a true XL 1990s Son Volt shirt. These items aren’t coming from Mr Porter or Tres Bien; they are coming from independent vintage sellers that have taken over Instagram.

I have been shopping vintage since my friend Jamal worked at The Clothing Warehouse on the corner of Moreland Avenue and Euclid Avenue in Atlanta’s Little Five Points. I distinctly remember him taking me to the actual warehouse to see the bulk deliveries, a treasure trove bought in giant pallets that would require hours of digging to find the perfect plaid cowboy shirt, my uniform at the time. That process didn’t interest me. I am not an American picker—the hunt (and smell) doesn’t bring me joy. There are plenty of hot guys in cropped zip hoodies in flyover cities willing to do the work: trolling basements and setting eBay searches to make it easy for me to buy stuff from my cellphone while I wait to board a flight.

The market is booming, because people have figured out that vintage clothes look and feel great. They are lived-in, have personality, and are now easier to find than ever. Your favorite actors and musicians are on press tours wearing vintage garments that speak to their new projects, and the streets of SoHo are lined with racks of shit vintage peddled by the worst guys on earth blasting music from a JBL speaker that’s blocking your path to get a sandwich. A certain sect of cool young people are dressed like 2nd Street threw up on them, seemingly wearing whatever they found on the dressing room floor after the person before them left. We have hit peak vintage, and strangely, it hasn’t affected its cool, only its pricing. Things cost more than they should, but the market is the market; sometimes you find a deal, and sometimes you have to overpay for what you want.

My issue is with the language. What happened to calling a shirt “a shirt” or a pair of jeans “jeans”? Everything now is referred to as a “piece,” whether it’s a hole-riddled T-shirt most would deem unwearable, an ill-fitting hat with the Rolex logo, or a pair of True Religion jeans. Before it was a blanket term, “piece” was the sort of word only used by a certain kind of enterally logged-on fashion nerd to describe pricey Rick Owens leather jackets and clothes by unpronounceable Belgian designers that should only be worn late at night on ketamine. A vintage store is now referred to as an “appointment-only archive showroom,” which means a concrete box in downtown Los Angeles with no air conditioning where two guys in Chrome Hearts who smell like weed ignore you while looking at their phones. Of course, you can’t just stop by and spend money; you have to DM and hope they get back to you in a timely fashion so you can make plans to navigate traffic and arrive in your allotted shopping window like it’s the fucking DMV. It’s fake exclusivity, and it’s running so rampant in this universe that I have to assume that it works.

Applying language where it doesn’t fit seems to be a ploy to be taken more seriously and, in turn, charge more money. A showroom is defined as “a dedicated physical or virtual space where businesses display products, new collections, or services for exploration, demonstration, and evaluation.” I understand you can’t call it a “storage space full of old clothes,” but that is exactly what it is. Shopping should be fun; forcing people to jump through hoops and play games just makes the process laborious and annoying.