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Sade Hillman, who is helping with the show, models dresses from Camden Passage’s Cloud Cuckoo land |
Vintage way to beat recession
Fairs featuring yesterday’s fashions offer lifeline for beleaguered dealers
A MARKET trader is turning the clock back to help recession-hit traders by staging a series of vintage clothing fairs.
Savitri Coleman, who has been selling vintage clothes for more than 20 years, is holding the fashion, accessory and textile fairs at Clerkenwell’s Old Sessions House, starting next weekend.
Ms Coleman has pledged to charge lower rates than competing fairs, give traders bigger spaces, provide a changing room and to have third-generation tailor Joe Allen, from Cross Street, Islington, present to make on-the-spot adjustments.
At the same time she hopes to encourage customers to recycle by buying vintage instead of relying on high street, disposable fashion.
Ms Coleman said: “I’m about recycling everything, giving things a long life.
“My mother’s garden and house were just full of things. There would always be a use for something at some point. It’s about passing things on and appreciating them instead of throwing them away. It’s particularly important with the state of the economy and green issues.”
She puts her enthusiasm for secondhand and vintage clothes down to her mother’s influence. “My mother was mad about vintage,” she said. “If something was falling apart we were told to mend it.
“We were always innovative, creating our own look. From being raised that way I’ve always appreciated vintage, from buildings to textiles, handpicking your own look, appreciating the work and craft that goes into it.”
Ms Coleman was spurred to stage the vintage fairs by fears that traders faced losing their outlets.
“When Spitalfields changed and became more of a craft market it became harder for the vintage dealers,” she said.
“Many are threatened with losing their businesses. The London fairs are always in west London and south-west and are extremely expensive for small spaces.”
She settled on the Old Sessions House, once the largest and busiest courthouse in England, as a venue after getting lost on the way to view another possible base.
Ms Coleman said: “I spent so long looking around Islington for the right venue. I took a wrong turn and was so fed up and stood in Clerkenwell Green thinking ‘We’re in a recession and nobody’s being kind or adapting to the situation’ and there was this huge venue in front of me. Someone came out of these beautiful doors and I thought: ‘This is it’.”
Even the fairs’ café will have a vintage twist, serving traditional cakes on classic crockery.
The vintage fashion, accessory and textile fair is every second month, from Sunday, May 10, at the Old Sessions House, in Clerkenwell Green, from 11am to 5pm. Admission £3. |
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