Customer Reviews

Alligators, Old Mink and New Money: One Woman's Adventures in Vintage Clothing

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Alison Houtte's passion is vintage clothes. From her early years, she has been surrounded by people who appreciate great style and amazing deals, which influenced her career choices. After spending a few years in Europe as a model and her big adventure with high fashion, Alison comes back and opens up a vintage store called Hooti Couture.

This captivating memoir puts vintage in a completely new light. Houtte's vintage is exciting, colorful, full of new ideas. Each piece of clothing has a different, interesting story. Each day is different both for Hooti's customers who never know what great piece they can find, and Alison, who meets a wide variety of people.

Reading Alligators , Old Mink and New Money is an exciting journey in the world of vintage fashion. It gets your attention from the very first pages. It simply pulls you in and makes you want to get up and go to the nearest vintage store and just enjoy new and amazing finds.

Allison Houtte had a decent modeling career that left her with a head for style, happy memories and enough money to get into retail. She now owns a cute vintage shop in New York and this book is a memoir of how she got started and explains --- sort of ----how she runs her business.

The book is filled with vingettes about friends, customers and family; some sweet and some not so sweet. Many of her customers appear to be fascinating characters, others badly need some manners smacked into them.

I've never liked vintage stores. Most of the ones I've been to were smelly, with no service and after spending hours looking I rarely came away with anything worth buying but after reading Alligators, Old Mink and Money I've decided to give vintage another try. If I can find a shop where the customers and clothes are loved as passionately as Allison Houtte clearly does I'll be very happy.

Don't expect this book to tell you step by step how to run a clothing store. This is not a text book but it is a charming way diversion for the book loving fashionistas.

Alison Houtte's "Alligators, Old Mink and New Money : One Woman's Adventures in Vintage Clothing" provides an interesting and fun look at vintage clothes as well as shopping. At the beginning of the book, Houtte, a former model, wrote about how her mother influenced her fashion style as well as love for vintage clothes. Knowing that a modelling career would not last long, Houtte decided to open a store selling vintage items in Brooklyn, New York. Most of the book centered around her shopping and discovery of old clothes that people deemed as unvaluable. Houtte talked about how she developed relationships with her customers as well as learning the business of selling to people.

I thought this was an interesting and fun book that centered around one woman's love for vintage clothing. This was an easy to read book despite my lack of knowledge of vintage clothing and I liked the fact that the author added some guidelies for her readers if they decided to shop for vintage clothing. In addition, Houtte provided lots of family background as well as personal information which made this novel such an entertaining yet interesting one.

finaly I've found a great holiday gift for my teenage daughter, who loves anything related to flea markets and fashion. This book was a really fun read that made me want to go shopping at someplace besides the mall this Christmas. And it reminded me of the influence that parents can have on their children, even if the kids don't realize it at the time.

This book is a total delight. It's a lot more than a book about vintage clothing. It's filled with interesting -- sometimes hilarious -- insights into the world of fashion, the realities of running a small business in New York and the personal journey of the author. Anyone who cares at all about style would love this book.

This lovely little book is an absolute delight! I have never been much interested in clothing but reading this memoir made me want to leap from my couch and run to Alison's vintage boutique in Brooklyn and find some little goodie to make me feel terrifically special. I not only craved the treasures I might find but the wonderful experience of the treasure hunt itself. Athough this was not possible, I was quite content to make myself comfortable on the sofa and vicariously enjoy all the fun of vintage shopping; all the joy of finding the perfect piece of jewelry or clothing. The enthusiasm in this gem of a book is quite contagious.

I am a guy who has no interest in clothing, but my wife does. And thanks to Alison's Houtte entertaining stories about the clothes that have passed through her life and her store, I now understand a whole lot better what's going on when my wife is staring at a pile of clothes on the bed, and can't decide what to wear. I had no idea that a woman, during the course of her life, can remember what she wore, and what other women wore, to an important event in her life. And I had no idea of the emotional connections that many women have to clothing...and of the subtle messages that those clothes can send, beyond the obvious of an exposed back or serious cleavage. This book is must read for men with inquiring minds.

This was a FUN, FUN, FUN read. Just a real good time for anyone who thinks for more than 3 minutes in the morning about what fabulous outfit they will put together that day, and especially for people whose thinks the best finds are those great labels at a FAB price in a Junior League thrift shop. I found the author candid and quite refreshing about the idea of wearing "old clothes" The clothes aren't old- they just have a history to them- and the author gets that point across with wonderful character pieces. What could be more fun than wearing a Gucci scarf you found for $3 to a swank restaurant! The savings alone pay for the price of the meal (yes,I am kidding- but you do look fabulous).Really love the book!

This is the most fun I've had with a book in years! It is, quite literally, transforming my relationship to clothes, awakening in me a sense of play I have not felt since I was 16. Thanks to 'Alligators' I am looking at my closet (and myself) with new eyes and have become an official convert to vintage. Houtte's book is celebration of individuality, especially as expressed through personal style. It is a must read for anyone who has ever taken delight in playing dress-ups-- at any age--and a welcome reprieve from our culture's glorification of mass-produced, copy-cat style. (I also highly recommend cruising www.hooticouture.com to complement this unforgettable read).

Don't like vintage clothes, don't like vintage stores. But the Houtte sisters' love letter to the old and the real offers a clear understanding of why others do and makes this reader long for such a neighborhood store and hangout. Their mother and grandmother set the pace for their race to fetching and often practical pieces of the past, and they're holding their own with personality and cheer. The book's style and wit make Alligators a fast, fun read, and for those of us of a certain age, the usually loving references are still relevant to our own idea of who we were and who we are. What a nice Christmas gift this would be. Even better, a perfect hostess present, one lasting longer than a bottle of wine, whatever the vintage.