BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

NEWPORT BEACH — Everything is old — sometimes very old — in the Swellegant Vintage Clothing shop on Newport Boulevard.

Dresses from the 1940s line the walls next to concert T-shirts of Bon Jovi, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. A bookcase by the cash register features high school yearbooks and Sears catalogs dating back half a century — and often used by customers who want to assemble a retro outfit. Even the store’s name comes from the lyrics of an old Frank Sinatra tune.

The store’s main clientele, however, isn’t seniors who stop in looking for a bit of nostalgia. Swellegant, which opened 11 years ago, gets most of its business from teenagers and college students eager to build a fashionable wardrobe. And any time a school drama department in town stages a period piece, co-owners Pep Torres and Nicole Bernstein inevitably wait for the phone to ring.

“They have fun, and fun sometimes escalates into hours of trying on everything,” said Bernstein, working behind the cash register Friday and sporting a 1940s-style pantsuit and haircut.

Swellegant, which resides at the west end of the Balboa Peninsula, offers clothing as old as the 1940s with a few other vintage items — lunch boxes from the 1970s and 1980s, for example — scattered throughout. The store’s crowded aisles run the gamut from fur coats to corduroy shorts to rock merchandise, with racks organized by decade.

Bernstein, who founded the store, and Torres, who joined a few years later, get most of the materials from estate dealers and storage space owners. Despite the age of the items, Bernstein and Torres keep the prices low, with the most expensive garments going for $125 and the rest usually hovering between $10 and $50.

Vintage clothes, Bernstein said, could be viewed as museum pieces, but they often had quite a bit of use left in them.

“Most vintage clothing was made to last,” she said. “That’s why it’s still here. A lot of modern fashion is made to last one season, and then it falls apart.”

Torres, who got his start working at a vintage clothing store in Santa Barbara, said Swellegant also got plenty of visits from adults looking to have theme parties on the weekend. Right now, he said, the 1980s are the chic decade for teens and adults, but styles always changed.

“A year and a half ago, it was all about the ’70s,” he said. “They like to mix it a lot. We keep track of Teen Vogue and all the other magazines, and that’s what we try to cater to. Of course, we like the ’40s and ’50s. When we were younger, that’s what was hip.”

LOCATION: 3409 Newport Blvd., Newport Beach

HOURS: 12 to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 12 to 6 p.m. Sunday

CONTACT: (949) 673-3604

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].