Unless you were a hard core history buff or perhaps, aced your US history class back in high school, it’s hard to remember that before we became the multicultural melting pot of America, New York City was a Dutch-owned city named “New Amsterdam” after its parent city “Amsterdam” in the Netherlands.

The average New Yorker can’t escape our Dutch past. “Harlem” is a town in the Netherlands, The Hudson River was named after Henry Hudson, who led the first settlement of Dutchmen and women to the area in 1609, and even names like Wall Street, Long Island, Bowery, Brooklyn and more descend from Dutch words.

So when I headed on my second ever “Euro Thrift Trip” - a term I affectionately have given my personal holidays of non stop secondhand shopping and thrifting, with the intention of buying all the good stuff and selling back to my customers - I couldn’t help but feel the most comfortable in Amsterdam, which feels like a more condensed New York but with a whole lot more bicycles, boats and as I would come to learn, rich, packed, passionate secondhand shopping.

Meet one of Art to Ware’s designers, Parron Allen.