Over the past decade, a great deal of effort has been successfully invested in downtown’s shopping corridor. There were dark days of the recession when too many retail spaces sat sad and empty, until a concert of private and governmental forces came together to activate them through holiday pop-ups and attract the larger companies that now take residence in the area surrounding Pioneer Place. Just a hop away is the West End (you are getting used to that name, aren’t you?), a hub of mostly independent shops that gather around the stylish, nurturing skirts of the Ace Hotel.
It’s really easy to stay focused on the new things when they come as hard and fast as they have—especially when they’re awesome—but some of the city’s best shops have historically been legendary vintage purveyors (Big Bang, anyone?) who were holding it down on the west side back when the only other “cool” places to buy clothes on that side of the river were basically Nordstrom Rack and Urban Outfitters.
These days there’s a sense of precariousness when it comes to the longevity of wonderfully cluttered old holdouts like Magpie, Avalon, and Ray’s Ragtime—places that stood through the bad times and see both the good sides (hello tourists, hello foot traffic) and bad sides (rising rents) of these better times.
Recently I had a conversation with Ray Tillotson, the “Ray” in Ray’s Ragtime, which he founded in 1986 after a background in theater and costume jewelry collecting. His recollection of that era sounds much like the current one. Back then, he says, the Galleria was the hottest mall and downtown teemed with locally owned small businesses. “Amazing little shops,” he says. He think the current crop will fall off in the next year or so with increased rent prices (he says his went up another $1200 per month) and competition (granted he admits he doesn’t visit many of the new shops, though he likes Boys Fort and Grand Marketplace quite a bit), and seems wary of the degree to which his store and others have come to rely on tourists more so than the “downtown workforce.”
Asked if the proliferation of vintage vendors in town and online has cut into his business, he says that the dawn of Ebay was “a bigger hit,” though he has since learned to use the site to his own advantage. I remember religiously taking the bus downtown to visit Ray’s and Magpie and Avalon—the three places I shopped almost exclusively when in Portland—as a college student, but Tillotson’s tastes and skills don’t seem to jive as well as they once did with what younger customers are looking for. The kids are into ’90s stuff, a situation over which he says he’s “still semi-horrified.” The eras he really loves run from the ’40s through the ’60s, though he also gets a lot of customers coming in for ’70s and ’80s-era threads to wear as costumes.
Never mind, though. Tillstrom’s as aware as anyone of the cyclical nature of fads, and derives a significant portion of his business from selling pieces to brands like Forever 21, Munsingwear, and Ralph Lauren designers, who study their construction and copy aspects of them into new garments. That’s a market he’s been able to carve out in part because of his willingness to buy pieces even if they’re in disrepair—he might not be able to sell it as-is on the rack, but it’s intact enough for research purposes. He estimates about half his customers are from out of town, and discloses that even other local vintage shops will buy one or two pieces of “eye pop” from him to attract people in based on what’s in their window. He also sells clothing to costumers and film stylists, and has contributed to productions like Leverage, The Mindy Project, Pitch Perfect 2, Liz & Dick, etc.
As for the changes in downtown, he predicts the building he’s in will be a hotel in five to 10 years’ time, and while he’d consider a different location—perhaps one, or a few small places on the Eastside—he doesn’t seem overly excited by the prospect. Moreover, many of his contacts in the apparel world are dying, so he constantly has to switch up his sources. And while he agrees the rapid changes in the city are probably helping he returns to his desire to sell to the locals. “If they could get more people to come downtown, it would really help,” he reiterates.
And if you don’t want to take his word for it, ask the parade of celebrities that Ray’s Ragtime counts as fans and clients: Adele, Florence Welch, Courtney Love (since she was 14, as well as Kurt Cobain), George Clooney, Erikah Badu, Zooey Deschanel, and so on.
“Everyone who’s ever been bored in downtown Portland has probably been in,” he chuckles. If you haven’t, time may be short. Ray’s Ragtime, 1001 SW Morrison