What started as a carefully curated collection turned into a unique vintage denim shop.
Melissa Keosann has a deep love and admiration for vintage denim. Actually, you could call it an instinct. She can determine which pair of jeans will fit a person perfectly just by eyeballing them.
Keosann opened her shop, LOV’D, in Boulder, Colorado, in October of 2023. Considering the personal attention required, the shop is appointment only. Keosann wants to ensure that every customer leaves with at least one perfect pair of vintage denim.
In 2020, Keosann was one of many Americans who lost their jobs during the worldwide pandemic. She took some time to regroup and think through numerous small-business concepts, but none stuck until she opened an Etsy shop selling seven- ingredient lotion bars. The skincare page eventually expanded to another Etsy shop selling thrifted and curated vintage items.
“I think it had a little bit of a Western theme, and that might have had to do with the fact that I grew up in Texas,” Keosann explained. “I specifically remember jeans that I wore back when I was in high school — a lime green pair of Wranglers — and I was just this little country girl who would wear her little cowgirl get-up with her belt buckle. But I was drawn to the Western vintage and drawn to denim.”
At a certain point as she developed her online shops, Keosann thrifted a pair of vintage Levi’s and found herself wanting to know more about them — for starters, how to interpret the words on the label. She joined a Facebook group maintained by folks who dedicated their lives to collecting vintage denim. They shared a wealth of knowledge and opinions as Facebook groups do, and eventually Keosann learned more about tags and collecting in general.
As one might expect, the denim fascination and her new interest in collecting it led to an Instagram account where she would list vintage pieces for sale. Her listings would include measurements such as hip, waist, and leg length, and people started reaching out, sharing their own measurements, and asking her how to find the right pair. Eventually, after matching the measurements of the jeans to the people, something clicked for Keosann regarding styles and body shapes.
“It didn’t start out as ‘I’m going to help people.’ It was people coming to me, but I had no idea people struggled this much with denim,” she says.
In 2022, she took the Instagram business into real-world shopping meetups, taking pairs of jeans to local clients for fitting sessions. This was the birth of her try-before-you-buy method, and it’s what set her apart from other, mostly online vintage denim sellers.
The hands-on approach was successful. “I remember every one of those clients; it made me realize people want to try on jeans, but I didn’t know that I wanted a space yet,” she said. She connected with a local business who offered her a chance to do a pop-up in their space. “I said, ‘Yes, but let’s do it for a longer term because I don’t like schlepping denim; I’m tired of doing markets,” Keosann recalls. “Plus, trying on denim just needs to be done in a safe space.”
Keosann eventually found a magical space in North Boulder and opened LOV’D — Library of Vintage Denim. Her unique service and shop blew up from there. According to Keosann’s rough count, she had more than 1,000 appointments last year.
“But the great thing about it is I have so many people that will come back,” Keosann says. “They bring their family members back, they bring their loved ones back, they bring their friends back. I know I’m doing something right when people are coming back.”
Many of her customers come to her for their first pair of vintage denim. Her primary inclination is to find a timeless pair that a person could grab every single day. “I have certain vintage jeans in my wardrobe that I know I can throw on, not look in the mirror because I know they will look good, and I feel like that’s what a lot of people are looking for. And that’s why I stock everything. I buy every style, every size, every color, and I want to be able to help every single person.”
At LOV’D, she carries multiple brands: Wrangler, Lee, Carhartt, Gus, Levi’s, and other smaller makers. And, “of course, this little country girl is going to have Wranglers,” Keosann says with a laugh. But every brand and pair fits differently, she explains.
“I’m realizing that sometimes the person makes the jeans,” she says. “What I mean by that is, I can have a pair of jeans folded up in my studio and think, ‘Wow, I don’t know who these are going to look good on, but they’re here.’ And then I put them on a human and I’m like, ‘Holy crap, this pair of jeans was made for you,’” Keosann says.
She trades and operates in a large community of denim obsessives who possess hundreds or thousands of pairs of vintage jeans. Some collectors find them in attics of old houses — not always in chests or boxes — but as insulation. Some vintage jeans are listed for thousands of dollars, and some are in museums permanently.
“To me, vintage denim is premium denim because it’s made to last. It is made to be repaired and then continued to be worn. I absolutely love the pairs that have a story to them and have patches. There are a lot of people out there who collect vintage denim,” Keosann says.
“I am grateful I get to buy from them — there is a guy I am going to buy from later today who has been collecting since the ’90s,” she says. “He even knows that the Japanese have been coming to the U.S. for decades and collecting vintage denim and just vintage clothing in general. I saw so much over there while my husband and I visited Japan earlier this year.”
Denim has been manufactured since the late 1800s. Levi Strauss (owner of Levi’s) patented the first riveted blue jeans in 1873, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that Wrangler and Lee broke into the market. In the 1950s and 1960s, jeans’ popularity took off, with different styles going in and out of fashion as the years and the rollercoaster of fashion continued.
“I truly believe that we could all wear all the styles. And they can all be a great, classic, perfectly fitting pair of jeans, and they will all be in style at the same time,” Keosann says. “I don’t think that we have to follow this one trend, and that is what drew me to vintage denim.”
From our August/September 2025 issue.
Make an appointment to find your perfect pair of vintage denim online at thisislovd.com. LOV’D is at 1301 Yellow Pine Ave., Unit C, Boulder, CO, 80304.
Photography: courtesy Ashlee Burke/LoveJoy Photography
