Locals Night, the Kimball Arts Fest. I was walking up Main with my friend Portia and wanted to show her my favorite Park City vintage boutique. I turned into the doorway and practically skipped up the steps, thrilled to introduce another friend to the wonders that lay within.
At the top of the steps, I turned to peer inside. It was empty.
Gone were the racks of Bogner ski suits, cashmere sweaters, sequin jackets, lace slips, fur coats and fringe vests, arranged in rainbow order with handwritten tags like “GOLDEN GIRL VIBES!” or “MAGNIFICENT, GLAMOUROUS MATADOR!” Gone, too, were the trunks and display cases overflowing with silk scarves, studded belts, beaded bags, embroidered travel patches, strands of rhinestones and pearls. And the cubbies full of cowboy boots, cowboy hats, cowboy belts — all gone, gone, gone.
There was no sign of the owner, Kristin Ensley, after whom my buddy Ryan lovingly called the shop “The Kristin Center.” No tiny, black Piper dog curled up on her velvet throne, a designer scarf wrapped around her neck.
All that remained were some ghostly strands of light filtering through the tall windows facing Main Street and dust motes floating in the air like the moment just after you shake up a snow globe.
I remember reading once that there’s a single molecule of Julius Caesar’s last gasp in every breath we take. If that’s true, then surely, along with JC’s, there must be the random molecules of all the Park City ghosts who once occupied this space. Like the vintage treasures that once resided here, I imagine the lives they lived, the stories they had to tell.
I think that’s what draws me to vintage clothing — not just the thrill of the hunt. And not just the happy fact that I’ve saved yet another shiny object from rotting away in some landfill in the middle of nowhere. But what really gets me is the lore, the lived-in backstory.
Later, I comb through my closet and jewelry boxes, and lovingly lay out some the most memorable pieces I found at The Exchange.
The metallic silver bouclé minidress that looked like it might’ve come from Judy Jetson’s closet. I wore that one with a pink curly wig and giant vintage sunglasses for a ’70s costume party last Halloween.
The gold sequined bomber jacket lined with silk and shoulder pads that looked like it had been yanked straight off the set of “Dynasty.” I even skied in that one on Gaper Day.
The statement fur jacket I imagine was worn by some ’90s ski bunny lounging by the fireplace at Goldener Hirsch. A vintage classic that practically begged for $50 aperol spritzes in the Vintage Room.
There was the eel-skin clutch I carried to dinner in Telluride, so striking that the hostess of a swanky restaurant chased me out the door to ask where I got it.
And of course, my pièce de résistance: a wool-felt fez. I know, eww, it probably once sat atop the sweaty noggin of some now-deceased Shriner. But hear me out. It’s encrusted with jewels, a bedazzled Egyptian pharoah and an enormous silk tassel. Divine, dahling.
That fez led me to my neighbor Shelane Nunnery, a fashion designer and friend of Kristin’s, who shocked me by revealing she had four similar fezzes displayed in her home, alongside other global vintage treasures. Later, Shelane and a group of us wore our Exchange on Main fezzes during on a champagne-fueled chairlift ride to a birthday party at Stein Eriksen.
A shop like The Exchange — and a person like Kristin — have that power. To connect people and place.
Going to the Exchange wasn’t like popping into Lululemon for a pair of yoga pants. It was an experience. A place you brought visitors to shop for an authentic Park City keepsake. A portal to our past, a place to express personal style, a PC moodboard come to life.
“Kristin wasn’t just a shop owner,” says Shelane. “She’s a curator.” Kristin, she tells me, had a deep understanding of the provenance of each piece she acquired. She appreciated the story, the spirit, the life behind the thing.
“If it’s a baseball jacket, she knew the team, the era, the story behind the patch on the pocket,” Shelane says.
“What I love about Kristin,” says Shelane, “is that she’s quirky and authentic and honest.”
Kristin was quirky, no doubt. And that was part of her charm. I can remember being in the shop during the tail end of the pandemic. A group of women came in and Kristin immediately asked them leave. They were pissed. I remember being quietly amused that I got to stay. Kristin told me she didn’t like having too many people in the shop at once. My impression was that she loved the controversy as much as she didn’t give a damn what people thought.
“People like Kristin are not everyone’s cup of tea,” says my friend Stacey Wooley, a long-time Parkite who’s known Kristin for nearly 20 years. “She could be as kind as she could be curmudgeonly. But even when times were glass-half-empty, her shop was always glass-half-full,” Stacey says.
I only knew Kristin through the Main Street location, but friends like Stacey wax nostalgic about her previous shop by Windy Ridge Bakery.
“She had one room that was all belts. A whole section that was just cashmere. Racks of vintage cowboy boots, a room of ski suits,” Stacey says. “You could do an entire anthropological study of Park City based off on Kristin’s shop.”
The Exchange may be gone — just another grand and mysterious ghost on Main Street. But it comes alive when you gaze inside your closet. Like the ballerina in a childhood jewelry box who only dances when you lift the lid. Or when you step out on the town in Park City, a bejeweled fez atop your head, tipped just so.