The challenges began for Ms. Uffner in 2006, when the landlord of the building she occupied in Midtown, as she put it, “invited” her to break her lease early. He sold the building and wanted her gone, but moving thousands of racks of clothes would be an ordeal. At the same time, commercial rents rose and the city’s clothing industry had all but disappeared, large loft-like spaces being transferred to corporate offices. Helen Uffner Vintage Clothing eventually moved to Long Island City in 2008 after the owner was fined $1,000 a day for not vacating her existing space.
The transition was not easy. Fashion houses, who also rent from the collection for inspiration, started giving things back through FedEx, Ms. Uffner told me, “as if we were in a different state.” But over the next few years, Long Island City became so popular that it was now a place for a marketing executive at Ralph Lauren to live. So by 2018, Ms. Uffner was inevitably in the same predicament she had faced before: the building she was in near Queens Plaza would be redeveloped and she would have to move. She eventually settled in a different space in Long Island City, only to confront the drama again — her current building is slated to be demolished to allow for the construction of a high-rise.
In the past, Mrs. Uffner had several competitors, also independent of each other, but almost all of them have disappeared. If she closed, the impact on the costume industry would be huge. Tom Broecker, an Emmy Award-winning costume designer who has relied on Ms. Uffner for decades, described her collection of early 20th century women’s clothing as extraordinary. “In the whole world Helen is the only one who has cotton dresses from that period,” he told me.
Even moving to Industry City, in Brooklyn, where the city has tried to revive clothing production, would be difficult from his point of view. In addition to film and theater projects, Mr. Broecker is working on “Saturday Night Live,” where he may have to come up with an old piece of clothing in two hours, taking a trip from Rockefeller Center to a semi-inaccessible quarter of Brooklyn unfeasible.
Understanding the importance of her venture to New York’s creative life, the city has said through the mayor’s office for media and entertainment that it is trying to help Ms. Uffner move, but little can be accomplished without broad commercial rent regulation. Over the years, she told me, landlords have added fees to monthly rental bills with impunity. In the beginning she paid rent, electricity and property tax. In another room, the landlord added gas, then came demands to contribute to the local business improvement district.