Vintage fashion warehouse is a treasure trove

Saratoga Trunk, Glasgow’s oldest and most venerable vintage emporium, is not like this. Anyone who thinks that buying a deceased person’s party dress is a glamorous activity to be fitted in around a Minx manicure and mint tea with the girls will be sorely disappointed. Traumatised, even. The store is housed in a windowless warehouse in the scrubby industrial zone between the Clydeside Expressway and the river. Neighbours include a motorcycle dealer and the soon-to-be-demolished Soundhaus nightclub. In place of J Sheekey there is a burger van.

Once buzzed in – Saratoga Trunk is appointment only, although if you were shopping for a Kawasaki and suddenly felt a burning need for an opera coat you would not be turned away – the lack of light, a fusty smell, cardboard on the floor and an upturned Lloyd Loom chair on top of the wheelie bin welcome you to one of the city’s most particular shopping experiences. Up the stairs, a wall of mismatched, age-speckled mirrors guides the way to a cramped anteroom. Gingerly navigating the buckets of canes, display cabinets of paste jewels and towering piles of tea towels, you are in what might, generously, be called the office.

Through another narrow opening – the already meagre entrances are made harder to navigate by the sheer volume of matter crammed into every available cranny – are the clothes. Thousands of them. Owner David McLay, 40, is terrified to even begin to estimate how many there might be, although he recently moved every single item from one warehouse to another. It’s Mr Benn’s cartoon emporium on the Primark scale, racks upon racks of everything worn from the 1830s onwards. Random browsing is overwhelming, if not physically impossible. Away from the main thoroughfare down the middle of the space, rails of ocelot-skin jackets and Inverness capes form dead ends and cul-de-sacs. It is also, thanks to the concrete floor, absolutely freezing. Contemplate beaded cardigans or contract frostbite? It’s a tough one.

In a small opening behind the 1950s pinnies, Andrew Blackwood and Martin McNeil are looking at khaki shorts. Saratoga Trunk is the first stop for theatre, television and opera companies looking for period costume; McNeil is playing an eccentric Egyptologist in a Mischief La-bas performance and needs the full kit. As well as the shorts, McLay has looked out sand-coloured shirts and jackets, tackety boots and a box of pith helmets. Earlier on, a colleague playing Charles Darwin scooted in, picked up a pair of fancifully checked trousers he had worn before and zoomed off on his bike within five minutes. McNeil is a harder case.

Perhaps a wing-collar shirt would work? McLay and May Fellowes, who helps him out at times of need, beetle off to find one with a size 18 collar. Or a military jacket? McLay produces a magnificent specimen, with matching khaki overskirt. Unfortunately, it would be neat on Alexa Chung. “The director of The Last King Of Scotland,” says McLay thoughtfully, “looked at that one.” The whereabouts of a metal hip flask provokes some debate. Maybe it has been sold.

Slowly a full ensemble comes together. McNeil is strutting up and down in front of the mirror, adjusting his pith helmet, elaborating on his character. “This man,” he explains to a rail of soldier boy jackets, “is two years away from gout.” Blackwood repairs to the office, checks over the paperwork with McLay and packs the clothes into gold plastic bags. (For a less well-kent customer, or a bigger order, McLay would also photograph each outfit and take a deposit.) All will be returned next week after the show is over.

This kind of short-term rental makes up a good deal of Saratoga Trunk’s business. Theatre troupes don’t have the space to store multiple dinner suits and boned ball gowns. Film companies don’t want to be bothered with military overskirts once they have moved on to a courtroom drama. They also come to McLay for props: bed linen and curtains, towels, striped ticking pillows, honeycomb blankets, mad crocheted rugs, antimacassars, embroidered tray cloths are waiting, in frangible piles, to dress a 1950s kitchen or adorn a 1930s tea party.

No detail is too small. There are ancient paper bags, moth-eaten ledgers, reels of thread, dolls (and their prams), board games, period plant pots, lamps, tea cosies… McLay looks at a flowery Victorian cup and saucer. “I don’t really buy this stuff any more. This has been here for a while. It doesn’t have much value except as a prop.”

Saratoga Trunk began in the 1970s, at a stall in the Barras where McLay’s mother Cathie began by selling toys, but quickly realised there was a market for old linen. McLay, 40, has been clambering over bags stuffed with textiles for as long as he can remember. He grew up with the smell of the boil wash and his mother ironing tablecoths; he recalls getting extremely cold and banging his head on her wooden stall during long weekend shifts with her at the Gallowgate.

Cathie was, according to Fellowes, who bought for her in the early days, the first person to realise there was a market for their mothers’ old bloomers and bed jackets. “Antiques were popular,” she recalls. “But not clothing. She spotted that.” For many years Cathie held court up a close at the top of Renfield Street. Glaswegian costume designer Trisha Biggar was a regular customer, sourcing fabrics which she then used to dress Princess Leia in Star Wars. After a fire in that building, Saratoga Trunk has been in and around Hydepark Street for the past 15 years.

Before Cathie died in 2004, Fellowes, now 74, promised her friend that she would help McLay run the business. Fellowes’ enthusiasm and knowledge for 1970s ned wear and the dress coats of the 1950s – including one of her own, which she can produce from a dense wall of assorted outer garments in a matter of seconds – is peerless.

Alice Hedon, who works in the costume department at Scottish Opera, arrives to look at 1940s tweed suits for a friend’s short film. McLay has selected ten suitable candidates, plus crocodile court shoes and a deeply creepy matching bag. A croc was definitely harmed in the making of this accessory: its feet form a decorative feature on the front. This relic of a different time shares a rail with a selection of Edwardian school marm’s skirts, blouses, academic gowns, mortar boards and an authentic bendy cane. For a murder mystery theme party. Allegedly.

Glasgow’s thriving burlesque scene has been good for Saratoga Trunk. A sinful blush pink silk chemise and matching french knickers hangs in the “office”, waiting to be put away. It was Club Noir co-founder Tina Warren’s costume at a recent event. McLay goes the colour of the fabric when it falls off its hook and he has to pick it up. Lately steampunk has created a new market for corsetry, frock coats and monocles. McLay takes a call from musician Scott Thornton, who needs a full Victorian ensemble for a charity event. He arrives in jeans and trainers and leaves with a top hat.

There is no such thing as a typical day in Hydepark Street. A Japanese dealer might rock up and spend thousands. Tilda Swinton or Sharleen Spiteri could swing by. Researchers from Top Shop may request a selection of flapper dresses or military jackets for “inspiration”. A large-scale film production may need to outfit hundreds of extras in demob suits, a vintage car enthusiast may demand a cocktail dress to match her motor.

Good quality stock has, McLay notes gloomily, surveying his vast fabric-stuffed empire, become hard to source. “Vintage shops today sell things from the 1980s and 1990s.” Fellowes offers another theory as to the shortage of suitable petticoats and tank tops. “Your mother bought it all.” «