$pent Studios settles into E Pike with $10 bins, a papier-mâché jacket, and big plans beyond the racks

Hudson Wakefield’s mom was sitting a few feet away, pricing jeans as he explained how all of this started. She’s the reason, really. When he was in elementary school, she’d take him thrifting, and the habit stuck long before fashion did.

“I wasn’t really super big into fashion, but I just loved thrifting and finding stuff for me,” Wakefield, 24, tells CHS.

These days, that habit fills a Capitol HIll storefront.

$pent Studios had been growing underground a few blocks away on 12th Ave and is now in the heart of the party on E Pike, where it replaced a candle bar on the block home to the Comet.

Wakefield figured he was headed toward film in high school. Then the pandemic hit, the free time piled up, and he and his friends were thrifting more than ever. Along the way, he kept finding pieces people had tossed for a hole or a stain that were still too good for the dump. He grabbed his sister’s sewing machine and started patching.

“Sewing, it’s like therapeutic,” he said. He’d like the custom, one-of-one work to someday match the volume of vintage on the floor. Right now, he admits, he’s in business-running mode.

The 12th Ave basement was where $pent grew the most, Wakefield said, with the shop and concerts sharing the same space. But the landlord wanted a single tenant to take over the whole basement, and $pent only occupied two of the roughly 10 rooms. Taking on the rest was out of range.

“We were basically getting kicked out of there, and I got this just in time,” he said. The E Pike spot was the better location anyway.

People will says things are overpriced, no matter what, Wakefield says, even at $5. He points to the $10 bin, where he said you will find jackets that would run $20 to $25 at Goodwill. Sourcing cheaply from thrift stores lets him keep prices down, and he tells people who sell to the shop that he’s offering a fair price, not lowballing them to mark it up tenfold.

“We’re just giving a fair price for us so we can be able to sell it for a good price for the customer, but then also try to be as fair to the person selling as possible,” he said.

The racks are organized by type, with $pent’s own pieces mixed right in. Flip through and you might hit Gucci, then Balenciaga, then a $pent piece, then a random $15 vintage tee.

“You never know what’s next when you’re looking at the rack,” Wakefield said.

Ask him what a first-timer should see, and Wakefield points to what he’s been calling the papier-mâché jacket. It’s not really wearable. It’s more art than clothing, and it came out of a fashion show $pent staged in April with Goodwill at its Dearborn store.

That partnership had an unlikely start. Wakefield and a group of models walked into the Goodwill unannounced and staged a fashion show in the middle of the store while staff were rotating stock. He half expected someone to call the police. Instead, Goodwill told him they didn’t love the lack of permission, but they liked the idea. About six months later, they made it official, with every piece shopped from Goodwill and reworked.

What makes a thrifted find a $pent piece? “I gotta do something to it,” Wakefield said. Sometimes that’s a full rework. Sometimes it’s printing a logo on something that’s already great.

$pent’s old space doubled as an all-ages DIY venue. That won’t work on E Pike, Wakefield said, but pop-ups, meet-and-greets, and small after-parties are still in the plan. Bigger shows will move to venues around the city. The shop’s next fashion show is set for the Comet with DJs, and it’s $pent’s first 21-and-over event. Another collaboration with Neumos across the street is in the works for November.

He still wants to keep putting on for the under-21 crowd. “I know how it is,” he said.

This summer’s Capitol Hill Block Party came with its own lesson. The store was largely fenced off, but organizers gave $pent a free booth inside the grounds. The shop made good money, met a lot of people, and the crew watched the headliner from the front steps. Wakefield hopes to be more involved in coming years.

“I feel like we could be a valuable part of that somehow, more than just popping up,” he said.

$pent is part of a robust thrift, vintage, and consignment community around Capitol Hill including Break Away and Magpie Thrift in the old Red Light space on Broadway. Wakefield puts his shop in the middle of the scale. $pent has sold pieces for as much as $7,000. It also has the $10 bin, and sometimes things go out the door for free.

These blocks of the Pike/Pine nightlife core also have made spaces for a diverse pocket of the fashion economy. Longtimers like Veridis and BAIT are being joined by new projects like the Furesh furry store while Sergius & Bacchus has new energy in a new space in the old Shikorina bakeshop space on E Pike next to Retail Therapy and the Slow Dance vintage and consignment shop. The Out of the Closet thrift shop helps round out the offerings.

Moving to E Pike has meant moving far more volume, so Wakefield is out, sourcing every day. He goes to estate sales and thrift stores, and he has even pulled a few things from abandoned buildings –“a little sketchy,” he said. The best stuff, though, comes from people walking in to sell or trade. A batch of leather jackets is about to hit the floor.

Black Friday sales, more shows, and a fully stocked store, for starters. Longer term, Wakefield wants $pent to be more than a clothing store. He’s thinking furniture, food, and a revival of the $pent energy drinks the brand released in a small run last year. He would also like more real estate in the neighborhood.

“There’s a lot more coming,” Wakefield said.

$pent Studios is now open at 910 E Pike. Learn more at spentstudios.com.

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