Our Story

It began with a trunk. An old steel almirah in a Pune storage unit, belonging to a family that was moving abroad, full of clothing from the 1980s and 90s that nobody had touched in twenty years. A friend of a friend mentioned it. We drove three hours to look.

Inside: a deadstock color-block windbreaker with German retail tags still attached. A 1987 concert tour tee, graphic cracked exactly the way real aging cracks plastic ink. Two plaid flannels so heavy they felt like armor. We couldn't believe nobody had claimed them. We bought the whole lot.

That trunk taught us something: India had decades of extraordinary vintage clothing sitting in storage, inherited from relatives who had traveled, bought abroad, or simply held onto things that were too good to discard. The pieces existed. What didn't exist was a reliable way to find them, verify they were what they claimed to be, and get them to people who would wear them.

So we built that. Retro Verse started as a sourcing operation — estate sales, bulk lot acquisitions from UK and US importers, collector networks in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. We learned to authenticate by era: which stitch types were used in which decade, how to read label typography, how fabric weight and seam allowance change by year. We got obsessive about it.

Two years later, every piece we sell is era-verified by our team, cleaned using methods appropriate to the fabric, and described honestly — actual measurements, actual condition, actual history where we know it. We still get obsessive about it.