It was a fundamental tenet of sports fandom. How coaches and players dressed, in matching regalia with the same fearsome logos like they were headed into battle, was how fans wanted to dress.

That’s changed.

Surging popularity behind sports vintage wear is steering the cultural shift. And Baltimore is having its moment.

MJ Broderick owns a vintage clothing store walking distance from Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium, so he’ll get a healthy influx of customers on game days and occasionally buy his own tickets. It was within the past few years that Retrospect’s owner noticed more fans upping their game day fits. “When I go to a Ravens tailgate or an Orioles game,” he said, “the amount of vintage is nuts.”

According to Google Trends, search interest in Orioles vintage wear has seen an uptick over each of the past five summers. Same goes for the Ravens, with more and more fans scouring for places to find unique vintage wear to support their favorite teams.

More broadly, according to a 2024 resale industry report by California online resale platform, thredUP, the global secondhand apparel market is growing three times faster than the overall global apparel market. The $141 billion business is projected to have more than doubled by next year.

“It’s exploded,” Rebecca Madariaga said.

Madariaga is one of a few leading the charge in Baltimore. She started Charm City Threads in 2013 as her senior project at Towson University, which she parlayed into a brand collecting and creating sports merchandise “for people to wear that represented the city.”

She moved to Remington and hosted a yard sale. That’s where she met Lindsay Street, a fellow fashion aficionado. In 2022, the two opened The Charmers Club, first as a pop-up shop before settling into a Charles Village brick-and-mortar last year — the kind of store you walk in greeted by fun fonts and colors that feel out of place in 2025.

These vintage shops don’t corner themselves to the market of only reselling clothes made before 2010. There’s far more artistry to the craft.

For Charm City Threads, about a quarter of the inventory is uniquely designed. The rest starts with sourcing materials. Depending on the state of the piece, it might get sold as is or turned into something fresh and fun. That’s called upcycling.

Upcycling is the process of refurbishing older materials to create a unique piece of clothing. Here’s a good example: Madariaga grabbed a dark green jersey off the rack. Having sourced letters from various throwaway Orioles jerseys and an orange No. 5, she flipped a cheap blank into a Brooks Robinson jersey.

Here’s another: Arvay Adams, who runs 1719 Aliceanna in Fells Point, plucked one of his favorites of a similar construct. He took a plain denim bucket hat and spruced it up with a patch reminiscent of the Orioles’ international minor league team logo of the 1950s and yellow flowers all around. Last season, Adams fashioned orange letters spelling out “They Not Like Us” — a reference to the Kendrick Lamar song — on the back of an Orioles City Connect jersey.

“You show up at the stadium, no one’s gonna have it,” Adams said. “That’s kind of what I beat my chest on.”

1719 Aliceanna is the storefront location for Adams’ brand, The Sporting Life. It’s a mix of used, vintage, custom and dead stock (old stuff that has never been worn or used) but Adams prides himself on custom chain stitching, prioritizing Ravens and Orioles. He’s a bit of a history buff too, which makes it more fun to plug and play designs with a backstory.

Adams once housed a bountiful collection of clothes and memorabilia spanning the history of the local ballclub. “I used to always have Orioles stuff,” Adams said. “I don’t now. Last year was ridiculous.” He sold off just about his entire collection to meet rising demand.

Broderick faced a similar challenge this winter. He’d stock up on Ravens shirts and jackets only for a line out the door to clear his inventory. It’s tougher to find old Ravens merch considering the team is still on the younger side of 30. Broderick’s favorite piece is a T-shirt specific to 1995 that says “Baltimore Football” with a question mark inside a helmet from shortly before the Ravens were born.

There’s a particular interest in the two teams’ old logos.

The Orioles have a longer history of different looking Oriole birds, ornithologically correct and not. The Ravens lack a deep bench of past insignias. But any vintage store owner will tell you customers pine for the original “Flying B.” Copyright issues forced the Ravens to abandon it in 1998, making it harder to find — like a precious artifact.

This proverbial shift in Baltimore is part of a larger, two-pronged trend.

Fans want to show up to games wearing something different. Vying for a look that stands out in a crowd — an approach as old as fashion — began permeating ballparks and stadiums. There’s a coolness factor to the fleeting thick lines and bold colors. “90s MLB popped off,” Madariaga said. In some cases, the recent trend was born out of nostalgia — like finding a T-shirt that grandpa used to wear to Memorial Stadium — but not always.

“There is nostalgia, for sure,” said Street, who operates on the non-sports side of vintage wear. “And then there are even younger folks who maybe weren’t around for that, I think they’re becoming slightly smarter consumers.”

The rise of fast fashion — a method of manufacturing large quantities of clothing quickly and cheaply — has driven some consumers to seek out older, high-quality clothes. “Nothing is made to last anymore,” Broderick said.

So by buying local and vintage, each shop owner will tell you, customers are doing the right thing whether they intend to or not.

“It’s more well made, way more sustainable and possibly unique. A real win-win,” Street said. “Yes, vintage has exploded but I think for a lot of the right reasons and not necessarily just a cool, hip trend.”

Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.