Located at 93 Whitney Avenue, the Fashionista Vintage & Variety has been establishing itself as a staple of the Yale and downtown New Haven communities for over three years. Glittery and cluttered, neither the store nor the clothing of its inventory can pass the eye unnoticed. Fashionista is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. as well as, the website advises, “additional hours by appointment—just call or email if you have a fashion emergency.” This week the Herald sat down with Todd Lyon, who, with Nancy Shea, owns, operates, and founded the shop.
YH: When and how did Fashionista come about?
TL: Almost 10 years ago, my friend Nancy Shea and I were drink- ing wine on my giant purple sofa in my apartment on Clark Street. I had a ton of vintage clothes that didn’t fit me anymore be- cause my other job was a restaurant reviewer, so I had gained 10 pounds per year. And so I had the most ridiculous wardrobe—I had every size there was, from 4 to 14. I had no hope of ever fitting into my old vintage clothes. I had been in a swing band for years—that’s why I had all these great 1940s clothes; I had a tiny waist then. Nancy had a whole different kind of vintage than I did; she collected cowboy boots and really cool sunglasses—and she happened to be living in a storefront on State Street, so we said “Hey,”—this was before any pop-up stores— “Let’s pretend your apartment is a store and let’s have a vintage sale, and we’ll make some coin for Christmas.” We sent our boyfriends on the street with cards, sent out a bunch of emails, and borrowed racks from Christopher Martin’s homeless coat drive. It was so much fun and everyone loved it. A ton of people couldn’t make it and we had a ton left over so we did it another weekend.
For three and a half years, about one weekend a month, Nancy and I turned her apartment into a store and sold vintage clothes. During that time we took in some consignment, we bought an estate, but we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We had no intention of ever having a store. It was supposed to be a one- time thing. There was one point when a giant rack tipped over and trapped Nancy when she was alone, under heaps of winter coats, and it was completely out of control. We just needed to put this all away. She still had to live there so all our closets were jammed. You opened my closet and things would come bursting out, and we were exhausted. So we opened a store.
YH: Were you always interested in fashion, vintage or otherwise?
TL: You know, our name is sort of unfortunate. It started out as a joke. People didn’t used to use “fashionista.” The word was a 1980s term for these really awful people in the fashion indus- try, also known as garmentos, who were these horrible, cut-throat people, who would know who you’re wearing, what season it is, whether you got it on the after-market. Just awful. They would completely judge what you’re wearing: Those are fashionistas; they’re awful. Now the meaning has softened. The joke was that we wanted people to know we were selling clothes so it was the “Fashionista Tag Sale.” No fashionista would ever go to a freaking tag sale, so it was funny. And it just stuck.
The thing is, I’m not into fashion, and Nancy’s not into fashion. What we’re into is creative dressing: a whole different thing. And using things from the vintage world and mixing it with modern stuff, and delving into things—it’s a form of self-expression. It has nothing to do with fashion; it has nothing to do with trends, nothing in the magazines. None of that crap. We’re totally not interested in that. We’re totally interested in inventing. We’re not followers of fashion. Never were.
So that’s why our name is misleading—we’re not fashionistas, we’re much more art than we are fashion. Fashion, to me, is an artificial world, and what we do here is real.
YH: Could you talk a bit about your creative background?
TL: I hopped around art schools, looking for the most avant-garde art education I could possibly have, I kept moving around cause they kept being too wimpy for me. Like Skidmore—get out of here! I love the school and I love Saratoga, but trying to make me a well-rounded young lady? No, I’m afraid not.
YH: Can you describe the collection?
TL: We’ll pull in things from all different eras. We’ve got stuff here from the 1930s up to about the ’80s. And we hand-pick everything in the store, because it’s fascinating, it’s weird, it’s beautiful, it’s different, it’s classic—it’s all these different things. And that’s how we end up with the collection we have now. But we also are really nuts and we have all these costumes, and I mean you’ve seen our giant animal heads—you know, the place is nuts. But it has to be: we’re nuts.
Our motto is, “we don’t need no stinking business plan”— and we don’t have one! We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants all these years, but it’s all about the passion for the things that we collect.
We still do some consignment, but we do mostly buy things outright, and we try to buy low. A perfect example of how we end up with our stuff: about two years ago, we went to an auction. A costume bazaar was going out of business and they had a big international auction. Nancy and I went, and we had no money, so we only got the stuff nobody else wanted. We called our collection “the costume bizarre.”
YH: What is your favorite thing about acquiring pieces?
TL: Well, there’s a load of stories behind every one of these piec- es. Once, we got a batch of dresses from a woman who was a swing dancer, and these were some of the most amazing dresses I ever saw. We had to court her. They were also these extremely beautiful 1940s dresses. A gal came in the first day that we got them, and I found out later she was in the Divinity School. She bought one of the woman’s dresses that fit her perfectly. She still has a dress on hold—this is one of the dresses, exquisite with these birds on it, and this suit. I didn’t know what she was using them for until later, but it turns out, the gal had been shopping for what to wear to serve mass from the altar. She’s a priest. These dresses inspired her, and they were removed from the current timeline. They were to her, completely timeless. So that’s what she’s doing with these dresses, she’s preaching in them.
And we have the most beautiful collection of vintage Harris Tweed jackets—you know, Harris Tweed is a fabric sewn or woven by these families on these islands outside of Scotland. They’ve
made it for generations and generations. So every jacket has a se- rial number on it. Right now, you can go online and ask Mr. Ralph Lauren if he could kindly sell you a Harris Tweed jacket, same fabric, same family, same sheep, and it would be 1,250 dollars. You can go down Broadway to J.Crew, there they are I think 780 dollars right now. We have vintage Harris Tweed for 65 dollars.
And as you can see, we hand-write all of our tags, so we have the opportunity to tell these stories too. Like, here’s one right here—this thing is wild, a 1980s, nautical-themed jumpsuit. Here’s the tag: “Oh that wacky Mrs. Cant—she can! In this white cotton, nautical onesie! Pure 1980s, complete with honking shoulder pads.” Her name was Mrs. Cant, and she was the head of the garden club. And we all tell these stories. It’s history by the inch, that’s what we call it. Everyone has different characters that they do—Sarah, for instance, has Pam. Pam always starts out really good but ends up doing brown acid, or losing her virginity to some guy.
YH: Pam has the best intentions.
TL: She just tries so hard! But something happens to Pam on every tag! Pam goes downhill every time, and she gets back up again.
YH: Where do you find most of it—at these auctions or what?
TL: We generally don’t go to auctions. Most of it we get from households. We don’t go to thrift shops; we don’t do any of that stuff. We like to know where our stuff is from, so we buy from households. People make appointments, and often there’s death involved. Grandma has passed away, and they find all this beautiful stuff in a cedar chest, and it doesn’t fit anybody, and they don’t know what to do with it, and its too nice for goodwill. They bring it to us and we make them some offers. We are very picky. We tell them we pay bottom dollar and we do; we take the stuff and we fix it if need be, and we put it back out there to have a wonderful time. And we want the stuff to have a wonderful time, and usually the people who bring it want that too. You know, that dress that grandma wore to her prom in 1964, they love the idea of some great 24-year-old girl going out and having a great time in that dress, it’s a wonderful thing.
YH: Do you have any special gems you would have a hard time selling?
TL: Oh plenty, and we make them completely expensive. Eventually, we come to our senses and have to part with them.
YH: Is there any particular order behind the way you set up the store or the different rooms you created?
TL: Well, this is the hall of the animal spirits. This room—this is our cabin in the woods. With the moccasins and this country painting, and this “Bear Scouts in America” poster.
And that’s the “Tunnel of Love.” But it’s loose. And we have our “dirty secrets room.” There’s a constant, huge influx of clothes. We cannot keep up with it. We are drowning in inventory, but we have to keep our price points good, but we have this room of overflow from just this week.