It starts, as all good things to do, with a rummage. The 18th edition of Made By Legacy returns this July 18-20, midday-11pm at its new home – sprawled across BITEC’s SAMA Garden like someone tipped over a particularly stylish suitcase. The venue’s new glasshouse, sun-drenched and lined with trees, feels less like a market and more like a living scrapbook: one page denim, the next hand-thrown ceramic, the next a stack of Patti Smith LPs that smell faintly of 1987.
What began as a secondhand fair has become something else entirely. Not a lifestyle brand (god forbid), but a kind of mirror – reflecting back the objects we cling to, the eras we romanticise, the way a cracked teacup or slightly warped record sleeve can feel more real than anything flat-packed and algorithm-approved. There are over 150 vendors this year: from Japanese collectors to Thai artists, furniture restorers, indie publishers, potters, vinyl evangelists and those who still believe in the handwritten price tag.
And the music – always on vinyl, never an afterthought – drifts in with the ease of something overheard through a motel wall. Bowie, some forgotten disco, a bit of Japanese jazz. It gives the illusion, convincing and cinematic, that you’ve stumbled upon a flea market in another country, another decade. One where nobody’s trying to sell you anything, only share what they’ve found.
It’s curated, yes, but not in a suffocating way. There’s still room to be surprised. Children under 13 get in free, pets are allowed, and the B150 ticket buys you entry to a world where shopping is not a sprint but a slow, sun-warmed walk. There’s food, of course – much of it international, none of it trying too hard – and pretence-free drinks by the pond.
Whether you arrive with a plan or wander in empty-handed, you’ll likely leave with something – a book, a coat, a mild sunburn. But more than that, Made By Legacy offers a rare thing: a reminder that taste is not something sold to us. It’s something we gather, slowly, like stories – across time, across stalls, across a weekend.