This Rainbow-Fronted Texas Resale Shop Is Where Designer Labels Show Up at a Fraction of Retail

I will confess something a little petty about myself. Nothing in shopping thrills me more than paying almost nothing for something that was supposed to cost a small fortune.

You flip the tag over, read the brand, and realize you got away with it. That quiet little victory is the whole reason resale shops exist, and I chase it every chance I get.

One South Austin store has turned that feeling into a curated treasure hunt. It runs 10,000 square feet of clothing, shoes, and accessories for men and women.

Tucked between the flannel and the band tees are the labels you were not supposed to be able to afford. Below is what makes the place worth a slow, careful lap.

The Shop Behind the Rainbow Storefront

You will spot it before you park. The building wears a bright, blocky rainbow across its front, the kind of paint job that photographs well and warns you the inside is not a sleepy thrift store.

The name is Pavement, and the South Lamar location is the big one. Step through the doors and it reads more like a boutique than a bin dive.

The racks are organized, the lighting is bright, and big mirrors break up the floor so you can actually see what you are trying on. Pieces are sorted by type and size, which is the small mercy that separates a fun afternoon from a frustrating one.

Pavement describes its whole approach as discovery, high energy creativity, and great value. That is marketing language, sure, but the floor backs it up. One shopper summed it up in a line that fits: “Great place to look for standout pieces and always fun to browse.”

Designer Labels Hiding in Plain Sight

Here is the part that pulls people in from all over the city. The good stuff is not roped off in a glass case with a bodyguard. It sits out on the racks, mixed in with the everyday pieces, waiting for someone patient enough to find it.

Authentic vintage dresses for under ten dollars are not unheard of here. Name brands turn up at reasonable prices, and the pieces that would cost a small fortune new tend to land at roughly a third of their original tags.

The shoe selection is its own event. Shoppers rave about the wall of footwear, and more than one has walked out grinning over the store’s legendary $5 shelves. Bags, belts, sunglasses, and jewelry fill out the accessory hunt.

The vibe leans grungy and eclectic. Y2K crop tops, 90s slip dresses, cowboy boots, and vintage gowns share floor space with denim in every wash. If you collect old band tees, people have pulled vintage Metallica shirts off these racks.

What makes it feel less like thrifting and more like shopping is the organization. One happy customer called it a “HUGE selection of clothing, shoes, bags, and everything is very organized and categorized.”

That sorting is what lets you actually find the labels instead of giving up halfway through a jumbled rack. A good resale store lives or dies by how it is arranged, and this one is arranged to be browsed for hours.

The fun is that nothing is guaranteed. A big designer name might be sitting on the rack today and gone by the weekend, and there is no restock order that brings it back. What you see is what someone in Austin decided to part with that week.

Did you know the real trick to a place like this is timing? Inventory turns over constantly because it comes from the public, so the rack that held nothing your size last week can be a goldmine on your next visit. Regulars drop in often for exactly that reason.

Denim Is the Quiet Star

If there is one category worth digging through with real focus, it is the denim. Pavement stocks a deep, ever changing wall of jeans, and secondhand is where the good vintage denim actually lives.

Old Levi’s, high waisted cuts, and the distressed, faded pairs that no factory can convincingly fake all cycle through steadily. Sizing runs the full range, so the trick is to try things on rather than trust the number stitched inside.

Buying used denim is also the kind of purchase that feels smart twice. Once at the register, and once when you remember how much water a single new pair costs the planet.

The pricing stays friendly, too. You are not paying vintage boutique markups here. You are paying resale prices, which is the entire point of making the drive.

Denim is also where the buy counter earns its keep. If you have a few pairs at home that no longer fit, this is the store that will pay you for them and put them back into circulation for the next person.

How the Buy, Sell, Trade Counter Works

Pavement is not a donation bin, and that shapes everything on the floor. It buys clothes directly from the public, every single day the doors are open, which is why the stock never goes stale.

The offer is straightforward. Bring in gently worn, freshly laundered pieces and trained buyers will hand you 35 percent of the store’s retail price in cash on the spot. Prefer to trade up? Take 50 percent in store credit instead.

Pro tip: take the store credit if you already know you are walking out with something. That higher rate stretches a lot further, and one shopper noted Pavement pays a better cash rate than any other buy, sell, trade chain they had tried.

There is no waiting for your items to sell and no consignment limbo. You get paid immediately, and your castoffs go straight back onto the racks for the next hunter to discover.

That daily buying is the engine behind the whole store. It is why two visits a month apart can feel like two completely different shops, and why the regulars keep coming back to see what the city gave up this week.

The RePaved Line and a Greener Closet

Not everything that comes through the door is fit to resell, and this is where Pavement does something clever instead of tossing it. The store runs a sustainability project called RePaved.

A designer works alongside the store’s in house tailors to rework pieces that could not sell as they were. They stitch them into small batches of one of a kind garments, so a stained jacket or a torn dress gets a second life instead of a landfill.

That same tailoring team handles repairs, which means a resale find with a loose hem or a missing button is not a lost cause. It is a fixable one, often right where you bought it.

Shopping secondhand already keeps clothing out of the trash. A store that repairs and reinvents the scraps on top of that is doing the wholesome, practical version of fashion, and it is easy to feel good about.

From a Houston Corner to South Lamar

Pavement did not start in Austin. The brand was founded in Houston in 2011 as a sister company to a Montrose vintage staple called The Leopard Lounge, and it built its reputation there first.

The Leopard Lounge is a Montrose institution in its own right, a Houston vintage shop with a devoted following, and Pavement grew out of that same eye for secondhand style. The buy, sell, trade model was there from the start.

The Austin arrival was a real event. Buyers spent a full year quietly curating inventory aimed at the city’s fashion scene before a single hanger went up. The idea was to open the doors already stocked with the good stuff, not to build the collection on the fly.

The South Lamar store opened its doors on August 14, 2020, in that sprawling 10,000 square foot space. Austin liked it enough to earn a second location fast.

By December 2020, a second Austin shop opened near the University of Texas on Guadalupe Street. Co managing partners Avery Robinson and Trent Sellers helped lead that expansion, and fifteen years after a Houston start, Pavement now runs stores across two Texas cities.

The Sunday Market on the Drag

The Guadalupe store did something the flagship did not. It teamed up with The Leopard Lounge next door to spin up a weekly outdoor market.

Launched on November 21, 2021, the Guad Vintage Market takes over the sidewalk outside both shops every Sunday from noon to six. Local vintage sellers, upcycled fashion, food, and music turn an ordinary block near campus into a browsing destination.

“We are excited to create an environment that provides opportunities for local vendors and allows Austinites to easily shop locally and sustainably,” said Courtney Hamala, a managing partner at both stores.

It is worth timing a visit around. You can hit the racks inside, then wander the vendor tables outside, and the whole thing feels like a neighborhood block party built around secondhand style.

The market also fits the neighborhood it landed in. Guadalupe Street, known to locals as the Drag, runs right along the western edge of the University of Texas, so the crowd skews young, style conscious, and always looking for a deal. A weekly vintage market was almost inevitable here.

Tips for a Successful Dig

Come with time, not a shopping list. The joy of this place is the discovery, and a rigid plan works against a store where the inventory reshuffles by the hour.

Check your finds before you buy. Because the stock is secondhand, giving a piece a quick once over for the odd stain or loose seam is just smart thrifting, and the staff are friendly if you have a question.

Bring a bag of your own clothes if you have some to spare. You can turn last season’s closet cleanout into cash or credit at the buy counter while you shop, which is a satisfying way to fund the trip.

Weekdays and mornings tend to be calmer if you like room to browse. And if the South Lamar racks do not turn up your size, the Guadalupe store is a short drive north with its own rotating stock.

How to Get There

The flagship Austin shop sits on the South Lamar strip, easy to fold into a day of exploring the neighborhood’s cafes and record stores.

Where: Pavement, 611 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704. The second Austin location is at 2932 Guadalupe St, Austin, TX 78705, near the UT campus. Both stores are open daily from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., with the buy counters closing at 8 p.m.

Start Planning Your Treasure Hunt

Whether you live in Austin or you are just passing through, this is the kind of stop that rewards the curious. You never know what will be on the racks, and that uncertainty is exactly the fun of it.

So clear an afternoon, wear shoes you can slip on and off, and go flip some tags. Somewhere on that colorful South Lamar floor is a designer label waiting to become your best bargain story of the year.

Featured image: David Olvera via Pavement