Oh, Grandma! The Boom in Selling Vintage Underwear Online

Around this time last year, Olivia West went to an estate sale held in a five-story brownstone in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, not far from the Museum of Fine Arts. West, who is 23, runs Fern God Vintage, an Instagram and Etsy account where she sells period clothes. The woman who lived in the apartment had passed away, and the family wanted to sell some of her belongings for quick cash. 

An old steamer trunk caught West’s eye, but it was locked shut. She wanted to know what was inside, so someone at the sale—“a guy who looked like Indiana Jones,” West told The Daily Beast—tried to pick the lock. That didn’t work, so eventually they drilled straight through. 

Underneath the apartment’s Tiffany glass skylight, West opened the wardrobe and found a trove of vintage corsets dating back to the 1940s and ’50s. She took the items home. “I thought, ‘Oh, I guess I’m going to sell this now,’” West recalled. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.