Located near Carbondale’s Historic Town Square, sits a brightly colored building filled with vintage clothing and homemade art. Inside the walls are lined with colorful clothes and at the counter there’s a shelf of handsewn patches waiting to be bought.
Martha Briana is a local artist based in Carbondale. Her artistic operations are based out of Tropicana Vintage Clothing store in Carbondale, Illinois where she also works managing the store. Tropicana, which is owned by Tom Egert, originally was located at the Longbranch building, which is now a Cafe and Bakery. After Egert lost his job in the early ‘80s, he and a friend bought the building and filled it with items that would be of interest for the university students, including books, games and clothes. Briana said the clothes won out for Egert.
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“…he traded a guy a case of whiskey for a bunch of tucks and he sold tucks for $5 a pop and all the university students, like, and they loved it,” she said.
Egert did vintage clothing for a long time, then wanted to try something different and in the early ‘90s he opened a coffee shop in the building. He later sold the building and moved down the street to the current building.
“He did that, and then for a while, and I guess he didn’t like it, so he sold it. But then he bought this, and so he moved the store over here,” Briana said.
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Briana said that from the late ‘90s to the 2000s Egert’s girlfriend worked at the store before she died. After that, it became vacant. Briana came in to check it out in 2013 and said it was kind of dingy. That same year she started studying printmaking at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Egert then tried to rent the store out to someone, but Briana said it went by the wayside.
Egert also owns three cabins, which is how Briana became involved with Tropicana. Egert hired her to clean the cabins and later asked if she wanted to help with Tropicana.
“Tom was like, ‘Hey do you want to do vintage clothing?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure,” and so we hauled all the racks and all the clothes back in. I painted the walls and stuff,” she said.
Briana had just graduated SIU with a master’s in fine arts and was screen printing in a basement. Egert let her move the screen printing to the store.
Briana said she prepared the store and realized that they had a business that no one has gone to for a while and that it might not make any money.
“Tom owns the building, so he doesn’t have to pay a mortgage or rent or anything,” she said.
To gather the inventory for the store, Egert goes to different clothing sales and thrift stores to pick up shirts by the pound. Some of the shirts and clothes he finds are used as inventory at the store and the rest is taken to the recycling center.
Briana said that before she met Egert she had been making patches and also was screen printing on T-shirts with a friend. They had the idea of buying some of the shirts that Egert was buying from the thrift stores in the area.
After the store reopened, Briana was able to work on her art. Briana and her friend screen printed their designs on the shirts. She did this for the solar eclipse in 2017 in Makanda, Illinois.
“We just set up a booth down in Makanda and made a ton of money. Because everyone and their mother came down for the solar eclipse and it was just like, ‘wow I can’t believe this,’” she said.
After the eclipse, she started making more patches out of the old T-shirts Egert had bought from other stores. Most of her screen printed designs are from old magazines or from random objects.
From designing and screen printing to sewing, everything is done by hand.
She sells these patches in the store, but also online on Etsy. She’s gotten orders from around the world and she also travels to art festivals to sell them.
Staff Photographer Riley Sembler can be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram @riley_sembler
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