The Curator's Dilemma: When Passion Becomes Possession

There is a moment—always a moment—when the piece is finally whole. After the mending, the soaking, the stitching, the brushing. After hours spent coaxing out the ghosts of sweat and smoke and rust from a stubborn bit of denim or wool. It emerges, reborn. Not flawless, but familiar, alive in a way that only something old and real can be. And in that moment, I feel the tug.

Call it desire. Call it pride. But really, it’s love.

This is the curator's dilemma: sourcing with soul, selling with detachment. I scour flea markets at dawn, estate sales in the rain, dusty barns where the light filters through like a half-forgotten memory. I am looking, always looking, for what once was made with care and worn with purpose. And when I find it—a WWII naval deck jacket, a 1950s Brooks Brothers oxford, a hand-knit Cowichan cardigan with the scent of cedar still clinging to it—I know immediately. This belongs.

But here's the trick: often, I mean it belongs to me.

There’s a selfishness to good curation. You fall in love a hundred times a month, each object a poem, a memory you never had but somehow know. The rarest pieces, the ones that made you kneel down in the middle of a booth with your breath caught in your throat, become more than stock. They become temptation. And yet, I have a business to run.

Curating Americana isn’t just a store. It’s an altar to authenticity. My customers trust that every piece was chosen with intention. That it passed through hands that respected its story. But sometimes, too much respect feels like theft—not from the buyer, but from myself.

There was the Schott Perfecto that wore its patina like war paint. I rode in it once, just to feel it move. Or the Woolrich hunting pants I spent a week patching, hand-stitch by hand-stitch, until they felt like something my grandfather might have passed down. And then I listed them. Watched them go. Felt the absence like a small, precise loss.

To curate is to love and let go. It’s a kind of monastic practice, this release. You choose the thing, you shape it, you give it breath again. And then, if you’re honest about the work, you step back. Because this isn’t about hoarding relics. It’s about reviving them for others.

Still, I keep a few. A pair of engineer boots that walk like they remember something. A chambray shirt that fits like a second skin. These are my reminders: that the best collections are living things, and even the collector deserves a piece of the past now and then.

So I walk the line. I let most go. I tell their stories and pass them on. But I keep just enough to remember why I started.

Because at its heart, this work is not just about selling. It’s about saving. And sometimes, saving means keeping the one that made you fall in love all over again.