The Inman Eats & Crafts street fair on Sunday is the last hurrah of We Thieves in the square, which is shutting its vintage clothing store there to focus on a bigger location at Porter Square.
The tin-ceiling store at 1307 Cambridge St. filled with one-of-a-kind finds opened during the Covid pandemic and has lasted longer than expected, owner and curator Sandra Rossi said Thursday.
“It’s very profitable, but it’s a very hard store to operate out of,” Rossi said, noting the lack of parking, access to the basement – she has to leave her store and go through a neighbor’s to get to the We Thieves inventory – or break room for staff, which the Porter Square store has.
With all of 420 square feet, the small size made sense as a move from Somerville’s Bow Market in November 2020. “I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Rossi said. “As we navigated out of the pandemic, I really needed more space.” That led to the second, larger location opening in September 2023 at 1735 Massachusetts Ave.
“The plan was to close this then, but we just wanted to give it a go – and I’m just tired. I didn’t ever want a big operation, I always wanted the store to be intimate and be able to create a really amazing in-store experience, which is hard to do with two,” Rossi said. “To be able to source vintage in larger quantities you have to buy in bulk, and you end up buying stuff you don’t get to see. And I don’t like that.”
Sourcing enough quality vintage the way Rossi does is also becoming harder in a saturated market, when it’s not even just resellers who are competing for pieces – brands such as Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic and The Gap are beginning to buy up their archives to get a “vintage” tab on their websites, Rossi said. That makes it a good time to streamline and focus on finding the best offerings for a single store, especially as Rossi was seeing many customers go from one We Thieves location to the other but buy at only one.
Jason Alves, executive director of the East Cambridge Business Association, said We Thieves and Rossi will be missed.
“She was a good spot in the square, one of the few true retail spots that we have up there that people could go into and browse,” and Rossi was an eager participant in business association events. “Hopefully something similar moves in and you can keep that vibe going on that block. It’s one of the best blocks in Inman,” Alves said. (For a truly intense browsing opportunity, there’s nothing like the massive, five-story Cambridge Antique Market, 201 Monsignor O’Brien Highway, East Cambridge, he noted. Despite having more than 150 sellers, “It’s one of those things that flies under everybody’s radar,” Alves said.)
That may not be long, considering how quickly a recent Inman Square vacancy was filled by a yoga studio. “There’s a lot of interest in that spot too, so I imagine news on that space will be coming pretty soon,” Alves said.
The idea that more clothing retail is on the way is not far-fetched: The address has long been associated with clothing and style, starting with Inman Square Shoe Repair, the cobbler business run by Nick Pfuji from 1979 to around 2015, before it become the Practice Space arts studio in 2016 and a housewares, clothing and jewelry shop called Sugar House in 2019.
We Thieves always runs a sale during Inman Eats & Crafts, but this time it’s to ease the transition to a single store in Porter Square. “I’m just purging,” Rossi said.
Everything under the street fair tent is $10 to $25, and much inside is marked down 20 percent. “Almost everything is marked down significantly,” Rossi said.
“I wasn’t really looking to grow and scale and expand the way we did. I gave it 100 percent, but I’m just wanting to simplify,” Rossi said.
Inman Eats & Crafts run from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday on Cambridge Street in Inman Square, between Springfield and Prospect streets. Open to all ages and pets.
We Thieves, 1307 Cambridge St., Inman Square, Cambridge, and 1735 Massachusetts Ave., Porter Square, Cambridge
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