Rod Stewart stuns sleepy Vermont town as he strolls into thrift store wearing leather pants and $1,000 boots with wife Penny Lancaster

A small Vermont town has been left reeling after Sir Rod Stewart came sailing into their midst - his sparkly platform-soled alligator boots and leather pants suggesting someone sexy was in their midst, but they had no idea who.

The 78-year-old rocker and his model wife, Penny Lancaster, caused a stir on Thursday in Vergennes, a town of 2,500 people on the border with New York, 20 miles south of Burlington.

Stewart and Lancaster turned heads while browsing the thrift stores - but no one could quite work out who they were.

Lauren LaBerge Taddeo, who manages the Sweet Charity second-hand store, told Seven Days VT that she immediately noticed them.

'This couple comes in, and they're tall,' she said.

She told Stewart, worth an estimated $280 million, about their special sale: buy three holiday items, and they are half price.

'They're very sweet, beautiful people.'

One of the employees, Maggie Catillaz, asked Stewart and Lancaster if they had visited Vergennes before.

LaBerge Taddeo said: 'She asked if they'd been here before.

'And they said, 'No,' in this thick British accent. 'We're visiting from Liverpool.''

As Catillaz told the pair the story of the store, which sells donated goods and puts the profits back into the community, she began to suspect that Stewart, whose 13-year Las Vegas residency will end in August 2024, might be more than your average thrift shopper.

Carillaz wrote a note to LaBerge Taddeo, slipping it into her palm.

'Is he a rock star?' the note read. 'Check out shoes.'

LaBerge Taddeo continued: 'I looked down at his boots and was like, Oh, man, those are $1,000 boots.

'They're, like, alligator, glittery platform. They're not a shoe you'd wear casually.'

She said she took a closer look, to see if she recognized the music legend.

'He's tall, he's got the spiky blond hair and a little music earring, like a G clef,' she said.

'So now I'm, like, really interested — like, Who is it? Is it Sting?'

She said they chatted, and Stewart showed off a bag with a leather jacket he had just bought at Your Turn Resale Shoppe, two doors down.

LaBerge Taddeo said she told her: ''Look what I got.''

She added: 'He got this Harley-Davidson leather jacket for $100. He said, 'This would be $300 in the UK.''

Stewart and Lancaster bought two country music CDs, which meant they got a third for three.

She told the paper she only realized who it was when her friend Shawna Sherwin, co-owner of Vermont HoneyLights in Bristol, wrote a post on social media asking if anyone else had seen Rod Stewart around town.

'I was like, s***, it was him,' she said, laughing.

Stewart and Lancaster told LaBerge Taddeo they were in Vermont because they wanted to experience a white Christmas and will be here through the holiday.

'He was so charming and sweet,' she said.

The owner of 3 Squares Cafe next door, however, said she immediately realized that the customers ordering two bowls of mushroom bisque and two hot teas for lunch were something special.

Andrea Lalumiere, the manager, told Seven Days she immediately noticed him because 'leather pants on a Thursday is a lot for Vergennes.'