In with the old

While the bulk of Lebanese would not hesitate before buying a secondhand car, most frown upon the idea of purchasing, let alone wearing, secondhand or vintage clothes. Deeply engrained as this attitude may be, secondhand and vintage fashion is on the rise in Beirut.  “I wanted to open a vintage store as I knew that in Europe it was [all] the rage but didn’t exist here,” Yasmeen Borro, owner of Vintage Story, says. Borro opened her boutique, the first of its kind in the Middle East, in Kantari in 2008. Initially, she had vintage clothes as well as accessories in store but quickly came to realize that while her clientele was open to buying and wearing previously used earrings or handbags, most drew the line with garments or dresses.  “The thought of it being old, that it may have been fished out of an old suitcase or been found on