Knoxville Vintage Market, Past Around founder Ricky Hopkins looks to the past for his future
piece by Steve Wildsmith photos by Sharyn Bachleda, Bill Foster and Ricky Hopkins
Ricky Hopkins has always had a gift that allows him to see potential in things so often overlooked.
Clothing, of course, is his calling. With an eye for threads that others often overlook, he’s one of Knoxville’s most successful young entrepreneurs, parlaying his fashion acumen into the successful business known as Past Around.
From the beginning, the concept – “Roots+Culture – Vintage and Pre-owned Curated” – has catered to customer demand at the intersection of secondhand style and eco-friendly ethos by those who want to look good but hesitate to support the lavish prices and environmental unscrupulousness of the fashion industry. And through the Knoxville Vintage Market, the conglomeration of mobile businesses that come together for on-the-spot bazaars at festivals, events and other happenings, he’s made the concept both profitable and sustainable.
But even before moving to Knoxville in 2010, he knew a diamond in the rough when he saw it. Case in point: his old apartment in Chicago near the city’s historic Hyde Park neighborhood, located in a building designed to look like a castle and the former home of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
“I was paying pretty cheap rent for Chicago – $600 per month – and it was this convertible studio in the turret with this wraparound view,” Hopkins told BLANK Newspaper recently over drinks and eats at Vienna Coffeehouse in Maryville during one of his runs to scour area secondhand stores for inventory.
“I wanted to buy the place, but then they started renovating everything, and now it’s a neighborhood of $500,000 condos,” he added. “That’s why I moved to Knoxville, just because I didn’t want to pay the high rent in Chicago.”
Hopkins was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he grew up shopping secondhand with his family. His father was in the military, and his mother worked her entire life as a retail manager. They were working-class folks, he said, but they had an artistic side they passed on to their son, as well as a passion for community involvement. Over time, those values coalesced into the understanding that thrifting, as it’s known, can be a combination of searching for treasure while serving a greater good at the same time.
Americans, after all, are notoriously wasteful when it comes to clothing. According to a 2019 piece in Scientific American, more than 21 billion pounds of clothing and textiles went into the country’s landfills in 2015. That information was culled from the Environmental Protection Agency, which noted that “fast fashion” – cheap, disposable clothing that found a niche in the 1990s as a way of matching the whirlwind pace of fashion trends – was largely behind those staggering numbers, an increase of more than 350 percent in 25 years.
Those weighty concepts may have been on the fringes of his thought process back then, Hopkins acknowledged. More than anything, though, it was economical, and it was fun.
“I went to school for psychology, and at the time, it was more of just, ‘OK, I guess this is what I’ll do,’” he said with a laugh. “I did my undergraduate at Auburn, and I would go back and forth from Auburn to Charlotte, and that was probably when I passed through Knoxville for the first time.”
Hopkins helped his parents move to East Tennessee in the mid-2000s, and Knoxville, he discovered, had a certain je nais se quois that reminded him of Chicago: scruffy, colorful, vibrant and populated by a cast of unique characters he came to meet and befriend through regular excursions to downtown and, more specifically, Preservation Pub on Market Square. There, he said, the lack of cultural diversity that seemed to exist on the surface was stripped away by the artists and musicians and roustabouts of all races, religions and orientations. He eventually found work as the manager of the now-defunct Market Square clothing store Swagger, but the journey to Past Around and the Knoxville Vintage Market was set into motion even before he arrived.
“When I started thrifting in college, I was doing what I was doing now on a much smaller scale,” Hopkins said. “I would go to Atlanta, to Tuskegee, to all the HBCUs [Historic Black Colleges and Universities] in the area and build community. And then going to Atlanta, and moving to Chicago, I started to see the rise of streetwear and sneaker culture and how these people loved all these nice kicks and all that type of stuff.”
While other trends have come and gone, one thing about fashion has remained consistent: the desire by young people to make statements about their personal styles, tastes and worldviews through clothing. And Hopkins is a self-described “vintage head” – someone who seeks out and wears actual band and brand shirts from the years in which they were popular rather than knockoff off-the-rack tees from box stores like Target.
“A lot of times, I’ll be wearing something and a kid will say, ‘Yo, that’s a dope shirt,’ and I’ll just smile and tell them, ‘It’s from 1992,’” he said.
Working in places like Swagger, he added, helped him expand his knowledge in both vintage fashion and the secondhand industry. Along the way, he began to see that such an enterprise could make even bigger waves if it forged partnerships with area artists and musicians, and it had a mobile component that allowed it to be set up in unorthodox spots rather than strictly at brick-and-mortar locations.
“I started thinking, ‘We need a DJ; we need to start markets; we need to do this, and we need to do that,’” he said. “Everything just kind of started organically as I got to know people in town, and the whole time I was sort of building that community, Preservation Pub was the epicenter.”
Hopkins landed in Knoxville in 2010, roughly seven years after the First Friday concept was introduced to build on partnerships between art galleries and downtown businesses often unassociated with art. Within a couple of years, it hit a peak, with downtown streets exploding on the first Friday of each month as businesses went above and beyond to crosspollinate traditional sales with artistic expression. As manager of Swagger, he took full advantage of the opportunities First Friday afforded him.
“We were having break dancers and DJs, and everything just sort of happened organically as I got to know everybody,” he said. “That’s also about the time the craft brewery scene started moving into Knoxville, and you could just sense that something different was going on.”
After Swagger, he went to work for Beth Boline, owner of Planet Xchange, the secondhand store that’s been a Knoxville fixture since 1996. Hopkins credits her with introducing to East Tennessee the possibility that gently used clothes can be a profitable business when taste and style are held to rigorous quality control standards. But the instincts he possesses for what works? Those are a gift, he said.
“It’s just understanding what people want, and really, I ask, ‘What do I think is cool? Because hey, other people might like it,’” he said. “If I like it, I think most people will like it.”
It’s not a novel concept; growing up as a skateboarder whose friends always seemed to look good while shredding, Hopkins remembers one particular hang in which a fashion scout for a brand he can’t remember stopped what they were doing to ask questions about what they wore and what they liked.
“It was pretty simple: ‘What do you have on?’” he said. “Understanding that type of stuff, and actually experiencing that, you began to see how these people were making moves, and it pays off: High fashion has embraced streetwear culture.”
Hopkins’ own business started slowly during his 10 years at Planet Xchange. Originally launched as Supply Depot, he had the help of some friends and began acquiring an inventory that, today, fills his basement, two storage units and an increasingly bigger space in his parents’ garage.
“Supply is my roots: searching for and finding cool stuff,” he said. “It becomes a sixth sense, and a lot of it comes from being more consciously aware of your surroundings, of yourself and of others. I’m constantly thinking about it, all the time. I’m constantly looking online. And I think it helps that I was doing this before social media, when there were just a few things like [internet discussion forum] NikeTalk, and you had to go to the source.
“Magazines. Videos. In the streets, noticing what people were wearing, and then building off that: ‘OK, I’m going to take what he’s wearing and pair it up with this or that.’ Hip-hop culture is an amalgamation of everything, and in a lot of ways, it’s like searching for great records in old stores and record bins.”
And like Jay Nations and Jack Stiles, the two seekers of music and collectibles behind Raven Records & Rarities, Hopkins knows exactly what he has and where it is among the vast collections in storage. Want a Sublime flaming lotus tour shirt from 1997? He can hook you up. Looking for a shirt hyping “Midnight Marauders,” A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 masterpiece? He knows right where it is.
“We say that we’re roots and culture curated, but it’s not just Black culture – it’s all culture and roots, even though I do have a strong focus on the Black cultural experience,” he said.
And through the Knoxville Vintage Market, those cultures have found a wider audience. The KVM, as its known, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary, marking the July 17, 2022, day that the first market took place at Merchants of Beer. Hopkins had talked with other vendors and merchants of niche products about collaboration, but it was a difficult sell to area businesses. Conventional thinking led owners and managers to scratch their heads at the idea of letting pop-up vendors sell their wares in places where patrons come to have a beer and relax.
That unconventionality was the very thing that would make the Knoxville Vintage Market successful, however. After the owners of Merchants of Beer agreed to give it a chance, that is.
“That first market, it was crazy,” Hopkins said. “It was July 17, so it was really hot, and it was just massive amounts of people. Knoxville showed up, and even MoB wasn’t prepared for it! That one there, it really took off, and I said, ‘OK, let’s go!’ We are so grateful to MoB for taking that chance on us. We really owe them. Then Joe Jennings from Trailhead was next to give us a shot. The second one was as important as the first. At that point, we really knew we had something.”
Finally, he realized, Knoxville was catching on. Similar markets in other cities were wildly successful, and as a guest vendor in Charlotte, he could easily make $2,000 in a single day. Since then, other businesses and organizations have climbed aboard, and the Knoxville Vintage Market, some of which have boasted more than three dozen vendors, have set up everywhere from Concord Skate Park to Honeybee Coffee & Brewery to Elst Brewing Co. to Barley’s to Cool Beans to Central Flats & Taps.
It’s a relatively straightforward setup: Hopkins serves as the de facto organizer, working with a few friends to secure locations and get the vibe right. It was a team effort to get the markets off the ground and it’s important to Hopkins that those who helped are recognized. He credits DeShawn Johnson and Mario Debro for helping to curate the vibe of the markets. Darius Williams (DJ YSN) always enhances that vibe from the DJ booth with just the right mix of old school earworms. Matt Alexander helped him get the logistics of the market tight in the early days and Angel Gonzalez tapped into the student athletes at the University of Tennessee. (Blank Publisher) Rusty Odom and Michael Lewis help secure many of the venues and Hopkins’ partner Danica Thompkins creates all the artwork. After the venue gives the green light, he sends the word out over Instagram or a group chat: “New market. Spots open. Hit Google Forms to fill out an application.”
Forty-three vendors, in fact – from EthanSucksAtThrifting to Blonde Bandit Vintage to Voltage Threads to Richie’s Riches to so many more – showed up at the July 9 one-year celebration at Merchants of Beer, and the event was wildly successful.
Every market, Hopkins added, has created connections with businesses and made new customers – all of whom leave looking a little bit snazzier than when they arrive. You never know who’s going to show up, either. Over the course of the market’s first year, people of all ages and ethnicities have come through, including local celebrities and many UT athletes.
And that, Hopkins said, is what makes Past Around, and by extension Knoxville Vintage Market, too special … too uniquely Knoxville … to exchange for a traditional brick-and-mortar storefront.
“Right now, it’s just too much fun,” he said. “We’re moving around, but we’re also moving around to help out local businesses. On Sundays, for example: Those are our busiest days, and when we set up, we’re bringing customers to local businesses around town that may not get as much Sunday traffic as they do when we set up shop. That’s our main goal … that, and to make people feel good by looking good.”
The bottom line, Hopkins added, is persuading Knoxville shoppers that fashion need not be unaffordable, and that selecting new elements of one’s wardrobe can be both an exploration of cultural expression and a way to take part in sustainability. The upcoming Vintage Market/Hip-Hop Festival he’s planning for Aug. 20 at Barley’s in the Old City hits all those marks.
“We’ll have the usual amount of vendors, but it’s a recognition and celebration of 50 years of hip-hop, going back to Kool Herc and that party in the Bronx,” Hopkins said, referring to the iconic date of Aug. 13, 1973, when Clive “Kool Herc” Campbell played a back-to-school jam to help his sister raise money. Within 24 hours, he was famous, as the party in New York’s most impoverished borough made life a little more enjoyable for attendees who grooved to Campbell’s bass-and-drum-heavy intros and instrumental breakdowns via a two-turntable system that within a few years became standard fare for hip-hop DJs and rhymers.
“We’ve got J.Bu$h and others in the Good Guy Collective; We’ve got The Productz and FTF Skitty and Motorcity Jones and Denzel Rae’k’won; we’re working on getting either Brandi Augustus or Black Atticus – or both – to host it; and we’ve got Dos Fuegos for the afterparty,” Hopkins added. “This is exactly what I had in mind when I came up with the idea of the whole market: sustainability and culture. We can shift into any mode, but we’re always going to have those two elements.
“Ultimately, we just want to continue to help out the community, to go from small business to small business and just connect with one another. From the inception, that’s what I wanted to do and what we’ll continue to do: help the community out, bring more cultural awareness and sustainability, and help out the local businesses in Knoxville.”
wildsmith@blanknews.com
