Petticoat Lane

Petticoat lane is an antique store that is filled from floor to ceiling with just about everything; it is a really big huge store.
To name a few of things you can expect to see inside this store — lampshades, tea cup sets, dining sets, trinkets, ornaments, plates, porcelain figurines, pots, wicker baskets, homewares, vases and mirrors. There is stuff that is of little collectible value but would work so great in a vintage lovers home to the expensive collectible items.
This is one of those places where you could spend hours upon hours looking through.

What a darling name Petticoat Lane, and what a darling little store, quite long and narrow it houses both antiquities and slightly younger vintage pieces. Petticoat Lane is not one of those second had stores where you carefully have to tread around mounds of very unstable looking ornaments and objects, everything in here is neatly and beautifully organised.
Shelves and cabinets are lined with the most beautiful cutlery and crockery — I was particularly fond of their selection of English floral tea sets and lovely Beatrix Potter plates. They also have an immense collection of cane baskets, furniture and dolly prams, mounds of old glass bottles and beautiful old mannequins and cast iron hat stands. If you are fond of the older and better quality things in life but don’t like the rummaging and digging around, Petticoat Lane is ideal for you.

There are plenty of recycled and upcycled stores in Perth that are full of vintage and secondhand homewares that are hip. Petticoat Lane is not one of them. Watched over by the terse gentleman owner, I kept looking to see if I could find something that was not just old and ugly. I left empty handed.

It’s always fun rummaging through secondhand stores, particularly those that have a good mix of modern vintage and genuinely antique. Petticoat Lane, near the hip Village Close in Subiaco, has a nice balance of both but sometimes you can’t tell the real deal from ye olde lookalikes.
I’ve enjoyed shopping for some cool one-​off pieces in this place, mainly gifts for friends and family, including the most attractive and practical of beverage decanters officially from the’60s. But to spot — amid all the sturdy old crockery and glassware — a cracked water jug going for $ 2 kind of kills the special heritage moment for you.
The elderly dude who usually sits behind the counter often appears dejected, and I’m sure that being constantly surrounded by old things and having to rub dust off these regularly can be a bit of a downer, but heck, if you like dealing in things from the past, you ought to put on a happier face!
Despite its name, Petticoat Lane does not stock recycled garments. It’d probably get a lot more of Subi’s hip locals shopping here if it did prop up a rack or two of unique vintage clothing.