The Hot New Thing In Vintage

“I’m such a tag nerd,” said Kathleen Sorbara, the owner of the new Williamsburg vintage store Sorbara’s. “These old ones just kill me.” The tag in question was on a black swing coat and read “Bergdorf’s on the Plaza.”

This is not Ms. Sorbara’s first venture into vintage boutiques. She owned the two popular, if tiny — 400 square feet — Chickee’s Vintage stores in Brooklyn, one for men’s clothes and one for women’s. As she grew out of them and decided to move to a new 1,000-square-foot store, she thought the time was right to rechristen her retail project.

She wanted a name that was reminiscent of 20th-century department store house labels, like Nan Duskin, B. Altman, Barneys New York, I. Magnin or Henri Bendel.

So she came up with Sorbara’s, at 326 Wythe Avenue. Fitting for a family affair in which her sister, Caroline Sorbara, is also an employee.

“It’s also a nod to my family’s history as small business owners,” she said. “Sorbara’s Beauty Salon, my grandmother’s shop in the ’80s; Sorbara Company, my dad’s construction company in the ’90s; and Sorbara’s Market, the grocery store run by my first-generation Italian grandparents in Pittsburgh in the 1940s.”