It might sound odd to travel 5,000 miles for vintage clothes, but I've done worse. I've queued in a carpark off the M25 before dawn to dig through boxes for 60-year-old dresses; I've walked through the office as a silk skirt disintegrated around my thighs; I've introduced a plague of moths into my flat; and all my outfits smell faintly of death.
But vintage clothes are all I can wear. I feel as uncomfortable in a French Connection tunic as I do in cerise pleather. It's not ideal - for one thing, vintage clothes are beginning to run out, bleached by sunlight and too many adjustments, and for another, UK shopkeepers are pricing them out of a mortal's league. So a vintage fan like me needs to think globally. The best place in the world for vintage clothing - the place with the most vintage shops per square mile, and the place where the best quality eBay finds seem to originate, is Portland, Oregon.
Portland is known for its wide, bicyclable streets, green politics and exported indie bands. It takes two planes and 12 hours to get there from Heathrow, with a change of plane in San Francisco, where, using the Clift hotel as a base, my boyfriend and I find the secondhand shops on Haight are a pleasing hors d'oeuvre. In the morning, we arrive in Portland, where a pianist serenades passengers on their way through passport control.
There is little beauty in downtown Portland - a one-armed busker plays blues guitar outside a barred drugstore - but within minutes of stepping off the light rail connection from the airport, we stumble across two of Portland's oldest vintage stores. Ray's Ragtime is three rooms of vintage rails, a long cabinet of costume jewellery and a ceiling of hanging costumes. Around the corner is Avalon, an airier shop with high-quality dresses and a hip-hop soundtrack.
I've arranged to meet Lulu, an expert on Portland's vintage fashion. Since closing her own clothes shop, she's built a website, shopvintageportland.com, to review and categorise the city's vintage output, including antique furniture, record stores, its 150 clothing shops and their glamorous keepers. We meet in the coffee shop at Powell's "city of books", which claims to be the largest independent bookshop in the world. It stocks new and used books, takes up a whole city block, and is teeming with long-haired Oregonians, baskets overflowing with important novels.
On a print-out of vintage stores, Lulu draws hearts for us by her favourites while behind her, two academics kiss furiously over a laptop. It's like closing time at a nightclub. I overhear a man buy a stranger a drink, and there is much nervous flirtation over the sale trolley. Posters on the wall advertise in-store speed dating and a nude swimming class.
"Vintage fashion is huge in Portland," Lulu says, "because there are so many creative people who move here for the music and arts scene, lots of artists, and designers and fanzine makers, lots of people who have transplanted from New York to find a more mellow pace of life. Plus the eco thing is so important here. People want to reduce, reuse and recycle, and by buying vintage they are doing their part for the environment."
She takes us to our first vintage shop of the day, uptown in north Portland. Flutter's shopfloor is dominated by a large birdcage filled with canaries, and a neighbourhood cat sits with her nose pressed against the bars.
The inviting misty light and $200 dresses in Flutter are a world away from the picture Lulu conjures up of the place many vintage shopowners go to buy in bulk - the Bins.
At the Goodwill Bins, also recommended to me by Beth Ditto, punk singer and Portland resident, serious shoppers buy by weight. "Fights break out!" says Lulu. "So I'm too scared to take you." We drive instead to East Burnside, a fashionable studenty area which houses Bombshell Vintage, Hattie's Vintage and Rock 'n' Rose, as well as an incredibly popular new restaurant called Le Pigeon, which serves meals on chipped secondhand china.
Locals travel by bicycle. One poll rated Portland as the best city in America for cycling - the whole Southeast side has a designated network of bike routes, signposted in green, and most roads have a bike lane. Visitors are encouraged to rent a bike for their stay - to stick with the city's vintage theme you can borrow a souped-up 1970s bike from the Ace Hotel. The bike routes continue to Southeast Clinton Street, where we find two lovely vintage shops within skipping distance of each other. Xtabay is high-end vintage: perfumed, silky, padded hangers and swagged changing rooms. La Dolce Vita is an exciting mess of gilded light fittings and comedy ashtrays.
From there we go north. Neighbourhoods in the Northwest are linked by streetcars - $2 to ride all day. Northwest 23rd is buzzing with young people, drinking iced coffee and leaning on cars beside a scrawled sign on a lamppost claiming: "Art tells the truth and pop stars never lie."
We browse Pop-Up Shoppe, a basement full of sparkly second-hand shirts and go-go boots, before a middle-aged siren called Pamela welcomes us into Keep 'Em Flying across the road.
"You can only shoot in here," she tells our photographer, her bleached beehive quivering, "if you promise me the pictures aren't for a sex paper." We like Pamela a lot. "We do good trade to the usual vintage enthusiasts, but we do have to watch out for the girls who bring clients in to see them try on the vintage lingerie. You understand."
Beth Ditto's favourite vintage store wasn't open when we were in town. "Fat Fancy is a vintage store for fat girls," she emailed me. "It's run by a group of young women who have set it up in their cellar, and it's only open one weekend a month. It's surprisingly well stocked, and it's immensely popular."
Back downtown, we spend some time at Avalon, another of Ditto's favourites, where the ageing owner tells me that his shop was recently overrun with vampires. "There was a vampire convention on our block. Another time it was a load of Satanists. I call the hotel they all stay in the Hellton."
Shops are beginning to close, and the clothes beginning to blur. We were advised to try one of Portland's famous beers - the city has more microbreweries than anywhere else in the US - so we stop for one at The Living Room.
The feeling in Portland is one of subdued excitement. Residential houses have mannequin legs sticking out in half-finished art installations, rainbow flags sprout from many bar fronts, and young people read radical weeklies as they walk down the main shopping streets.
In the morning we stumble into more vintage stores. The Red Light is two huge rooms of colour-coded racks - I buy a leopard-print 1950s sheath dress, and a 1970s denim shirt dress for $15 each - "Oh, expensive," said the girl who looked at it first.
Thirty seconds away we spot the House of Vintage, which is what the Americans call a vintage mall: hundreds and hundreds of stalls and rails, mostly tat but a joy to trawl through. We are kicked out at closing and wander along Hawthorne, a street that might have been transplanted from 1975.
On the long journey home we stop off again in San Francisco, and test our fine new vintage clothes at the fanciest place in town. Brunch at the Ritz-Carlton is stupidly decadent, with sushi, champagne and flourless chocolate cakes. My Portland leopard-print dress dines with lounge suits and twin-sets, and helps me get drunk on the yellow California afternoon.
On the plane home I sigh a lot and read American Vogue. Flicking through the perfume samples, I find Grammy-winner Adele gushing about touring America, because of the "great vintage places in Portland. Twenty on one block, all amazing. Better than Brick Lane." And pop stars never lie.
At a glance
Xtabay Vintage Clothing Boutique, 2515 S.E. Clinton St
This a beautiful store stocked with high-end women's vintage, and staffed by a glamour puss.• xtabayvintage.blogspot.com
Fat Fancy, 834 N.E. Emerson
Beth Ditto's favourite vintage store is run by a group of young women in their cellar for plus-sized fashion lovers.• myspace.com/fatfancy
Ray's Ragtime, 1001 S.W. Morrison St
One of Portland's oldest vintage stores, this is stocked with a massive selection of mainly 1960s men's and women's vintage clothing, plus a great costume jewellery collection. raysragtime.com
Bombshell Vintage, 811 E. Burnside St
Sells 40s to 80s clothing at surprisingly good prices. bombshellvintageclothing.com
Flutter, 3948 N. Mississippi Ave
Flutter is a gorgeous trove of homewares and reconstructed vintage clothes. flutterclutter.com/shop/shop.php
Eva Wiseman stayed at the Hotel deluxe in Portland (hoteldeluxeportland.com), and, in San Francisco, at the Clift Hotel (clifthotel.com) and Ritz-Carlton (ritzcarlton.com).
United (unitedairlines.co.uk) flies to Portland from London airports from around £345. For more Portland information, contact Travel Oregon (01326 250213; traveloregon.com).
Six more cities for cheap chic
Berlin
The place to head for is Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin's answer to Greenwich Village (only considerably cheaper) located in the eastern part of the city. The main streets for vintage shops are Eberswalderstrasse, Schönhauser Allee and Oderbergerstrasse, where boutiques brim with racks of floral dresses, colourful shirts, boots, decorative objects and even the odd bit of authentic Bauhaus furniture.
Cache Coeur (Schönhauser Allee 174) stocks top-end 1950s clothes while Optiking (Eberswalder 34) specialises in sunglasses, and Paul's Boutique (Oderbergerstrasse 47) has a mind-boggling selection of trainers and jeans. Sommerladen (Linienstrasse 153) sells designer pieces and accessories at very reasonable prices. VEB is a vintage brand with a couple of stores; VEBorange (Oderbergerstrasse 29) sells original East German furniture from the 1960s and 1970s while VEB Danz Schuh (Danzigerstrasse 2) sells period coats and shoes.
If you're up for rummaging and have a discerning eye, Berlin's flea markets can be a good bargain option; the Arkonaplatz market (Sundays 10am-4pm) in Prenzlauer Berg has a hip, alternative vibe and great 1970s clothes and furniture.
Toronto
The vintage shops in Toronto come with a lot less attitude than some of their American counterparts. Kensington Market, the city's most eclectic neighbourhood, is the best place to start; the two Exile boutiques (20 and 62 Kensington Avenue) are generally considered to be the best, first opened by owner Lynn Harpell in 1975. Bungalow (273 August Avenue) is sleek and spacious, with furniture as well as men's and women's fashion. The polar opposite is Courage My Love (14 Kensington Avenue), an eccentric mix of 1970s fashion, vintage jewellery and trinkets brought back by the co-owner Stewart Scriver, who combines running the shop he founded in 1975, with travelling. Cabaret (672 Queen Street West) has a more elegant, 1930s feel - the hats, lingerie and eveningwear date back to the 1900s - Dita von Teese is a big fan.
If you want to dress your house, rather than yourself, there are plenty of vintage furniture stores that sell vases, lamps, ashtrays and other bric-a-brac that should be able to fit into a suitcase. The Queen West Antique Centre (1605 Queen Street West) is much groovier than it sounds, a mix of flea market, antique shop and Aladdin's Cave, while Red Indian Art Deco (536 Queen Street West) has an eclectic mix of telephones, lamps, kitchenware and pinball machines - truly mind-boggling.
Leeds
The arrival of Harvey Nicks was hailed as a new dawn for Leeds, as a shopping destination to rival London and Glasgow. In fact, it eclipses both when it comes to vintage, with a clutch of well-stocked boutiques selling clothes, shoes, furniture and retro homeware. Start off in the Exchange Quarter, where the classic 1970s frontage of Blue Rinse Vintage (9-11 Call Lane) offers reasonably priced men's and womenswear. Ryan Vintage (163 Lower Briggate) just around the corner, has loads of one-off dresses, blouses and jackets crammed onto the rails.
Serious vintage-hunters should hop on a bus to Hyde Park Corner, which has a small collection of boutiques including two vintage stores; Final Curtain (Headingley Lane), which sells beautiful eveningwear, dinner jackets and couture from the 1930s onwards, and Retro Boutique (8 Headingley Lane), which boasts two floors crammed with antiques, furniture, jewellery and anything else that fits the vintage tag.
The city also holds vintage fashion fairs on certain days throughout the year, when you can get a multi-boutique hit all in one spot. This year they will be held on 14 June and 15 November at the Leeds Town Hall, 9.30am-4.30pm. Entry costs £3, book at leedsvintagefashionfairs.com.
Paris
It's no surprise that Paris is one of the best cities in the world for vintage shopping, but bargains can be hard to come by. "Quidam de Revel (26 Rue Poitou) is really good, although pricey," says Funmi Odulate, author of Shopping for Vintage and editor of fashion website brownsfashion.com. "But it does stock classic designer pieces, including clothes by Pierre Cardin and Dior. It is appointment only.
"The Marché Serpette has some great stores; Olwen Forest is amazing, and she has a stunning collection of jewellery. I have spent hours in there, browsing through the statement pieces by designers such as Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Schiaparelli." Marché Serpette is one of a collection of markets called the "Puces" - with each one specialising in something different. Known collectively as the Flea Market of Saint-Ouen, it has been in operation for centuries and is now open on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from 9.30am-6pm. The Antica Market has beautiful art deco objects and furniture, while Marché Biron specialises in glassware. The Monde du Voyage in the Marche Serpette is another excellent spot for browsing through Hermes jewellery, classic Vuitton luggage and Chanel bags to die for.
If price isn't a concern, head to Ragtime (23 rue de l'Echaudé) where beautiful Dior evening gowns are kept in mint condition. More affordable is Casablanca (17 Rue Moret), which has a good selection of men's clothes from the 1920s to the 1960s and great dresses.
Hastings/St Leonards
Hastings has long had a shabby-chic reputation, but St Leonards-on-Sea, its nearest neighbour, has never really managed to shake off its lace-curtains-and-crimplene image. One street is starting to change all that - Norman Road (thenormanroad.co.uk), which bills itself as the south-east's answer to fashionable Portobello in London, is lined with boutiques, shops, and stores selling retro bits and bobs and vintage frocks.
Skylon (no 64), focuses on interiors, with unique finds like the fabulous Rubik's cube cupboards (3ftx3ft), kitsch American wallhangings and elegant 1950s winged sofas. Further along, Why? (no 46) caters for all your 70s glitterball needs while Eras of Style (nos 32-34) offers stunning Chesterfields, chandeliers and armoires.
In Hastings itself, No. Eight (1-3 Hill Street) houses a mix of vintage and contemporary furniture, glassware and ceramics - elegantly restored dressers and tables, and fabulous old rocking chairs.
Antwerp
Belgium's most stylish city has some of the best vintage shops on the continent - with prices that are far more affordable than their Parisian counterparts. "I absolutely love Episode (Steenhouwersvest 34a)" says Funmi Odulate. "It's a huge warehouse just rammed with everything - fur coats, masses of jewellery, 60s dresses, 1980s ra-ra skirts and the prices are also brilliant. When I was there they had a great €10 section, with lots of things like vintage gloves and mock-croc handbags. It's a place not to do in a hurry."
Just down the road lies Francis (Steenhouwersvest 14), which stocks furniture from the 1950s to the 1970s, bags, scarves and a selection of vintage dresses. In the south of the city, FCS (Timmerwerfstraat 8) mixes bags, jewellery, lighting and furniture, with a particularly impressive range of 60s and 70s chairs and sofas.
The best place to haggle for a vintage bargain is the Vrijdagmarkt, the Friday flea market located just off Hoogstraat. It's been going for 500 years and it's possible to pick up anything from an antique watch to 60s print dresses or a sparkly 70s clutch.
Annabelle Thorpe
