Talking Shop

In a gift economy, you contribute out of the goodness of your heart, and in return you get, maybe, a usable dose of positive karma or perhaps a returned favor. It’s a recycling of kindness that makes sense among folks who have the discipline to make it work. Folks like Adam Tinnell and Kate Kershenstein, for instance — little people who work at places like bookstores and movie theaters who think there are enough similar people in the area for it to at least succeed on some small, communal scale.

A few years ago in Boulder, Adam and Kate ran their own experiment in gift economy — a free store called Free Store — that was a wild success, maybe too wild. “It kind of exploded and turned into a thing we couldn’t control. So we decided to take a few years off,” Adam says of the shop where students and others could find a new wardrobe for free. But they learned a few things, and eventually, in the right time and place, they’re giving it another go, this time as the Free Boutique, which is open for business at the Antique Mall of Lakewood, 9635 West Colfax Avenue. “This time,” Adam explains, “we wanted the inventory to be more high-end, fashion-forward and edited.”

Stocked with donated, recycled clothing and accessories (which the anti-entrepreneurs plan to solicit quarterly at communal donation parties) and manned by volunteers, the boutique debuts with a spring theme, “Pastel Paradise,” and the added promise of offering free alterations to customers on weekends. “We’re counting on people to take this concept under their wing, that they’ll feel this is a project they can support,” Adam notes hopefully, implying that it takes a village…to keep a free store open.

Visit the Free Boutique from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday or noon to 5 p.m. Sunday; for more information, to volunteer or to make a donation, visit www.myspace.com/thefreeboutique.

Mondays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sundays, 12-5 p.m., 2008