Positively North Texas: Faded Blue antique shopping

DENTON - Faded Blue antique shop sits on Locust Street and catches any eye that journeys past.

Just a few blocks from the downtown square, the building was once home to a seed store, a church, and even a grocery store. Now it belongs to the honorable Devin Drake.

After working a plethora of years for a fortune five-hundred company, Drake was laid off at the age of fifty-one. Unemployed and not wanting to go back into the corporate world, Drake decided to open Faded Blue.

“I always wanted my own business; I just never knew exactly what it was going to be.”

Drake had high hopes for his classical take on antique shopping, and his expectations were met.

“People were excited to have something new, they were curios, it took almost three months to remodel the place, so they saw activity here and wanted to know what was going on, so I had traffic from day one.”

Drake remembers counting thirty people on the first day his doors opened.

Faded Blue has been open for five years now and it is one of few antique shops still standing after the pandemic.

“We were one of the few antique stores to survive in Denton. We lost several during COVID, it was a very tough time.”

Drake’s store encompasses many jewels, from records, to darts and supplies, to plants on the patio. Drake suspects that Faded Blue may one day become a record store. The small things being sold, the easier to ship, more revenue for the store.

Drake opened Faded Blue with nothing more than a couple vintage treasures from storage units and the hop that others would share his love of forgotten things. He wants his little hole in the wall to be remembered as a part of Denton’s legacy.