I meet with Gigi, albeit virtually, on our Zoom call as we discuss her Dressing Room and all things second-hand. I initially reached out to Gigi after seeing her store, ‘Gigi’s Dressing Room’, featured in Vogue under the ‘The Best Vintage Shops in London’.
As we talk, I am immediately hit with the warmth and kindness that radiates from her and makes her boutique so successful. She is passionate about sustainability, clothing, self-confidence, and evolving the world of fashion.
I first ask Gigi why she was motivated to open a vintage store, and what inspired her? ‘Wow, where do we begin?’, Gigi laughs, ‘my first passion is really working with people, I wanted to be a therapist and counsellor when I started my vintage shop. And then what happened is I used to just have my whole flat in North London full of clothes … All of my friends would come over and have big dress up sessions … and they used to say to me: you should do this!’
‘I wanted to create a space that didn’t really feel like a retail space’, she tells me, ‘That’s why I called it a Dressing Room as I wanted people to just come and find a way to express [themselves]. I always liked rentals as well and I just thought: some pieces don’t even need to be in someone’s wardrobe’.
Inspired by her grandmother, who was a dressmaker and taught her how to sew, Gigi’s forward-thinking ideas about vintage fashion actually came from her: ‘my grandmother would teach me how to cut up dresses from years ago and make them into a more contemporary piece. That is controversial as some people don’t like to customise, but I still customise pieces and make [clothing] a bit more contemporary’.
Gigi’s love for vintage is a culmination of the individuality granted by the clothing, and the emotional impact that dressing in vintage clothing can have. The Dressing Room for Gigi became the answer to her question: ‘how do I mesh the businesswoman in me with the human in me who wants a better world?’ She tells me that vintage shopping is ‘like a psychological journey as well, it helps you express yourself and find out who you are … I’ve had situations where people have had big psychological breakthroughs in store where a dress might remind them of a grandmother, or a mother … it goes really deep. So, I’ve had people having proper therapy sessions in my dressing room where we’ve had to sit down and have a talk and do some coaching and it’s really fantastic. So, for me, it goes much deeper than just a person buying some clothes’.
The stories that come with her dressing room seem to impact her the most as I ask her what the most precious item is that she’s ever had in the store. ‘I think it’s always something that’s attached more to the story, I guess, because I have been given things that to this day I really cherish’. She briefly talks about a Christian Dior dress that was ‘considered a museum piece’ yet she formed no attachment to it and no one else showed an interest in it. Quickly she moves on to tell me a story that is less grandiose, but far more personal: ‘I’ve had a dress that was sold to me by a 90-year-old … in the 50s her boyfriend bought it for her 21st birthday … For me, it felt so special that someone trusted me … and really wanted the dress to live in my Dressing Room. The stories make it so special’.
As more flaws in vintage businesses are coming to light, Gigi’s response was to start calling herself a ‘slow fashion boutique’. She believed that ‘even calling myself a vintage boutique was limiting … because my customers are quite contemporary and they don’t really wear much vintage. I also wanted to show them that I’m working with ethical brands as well and making things out of the surplus waste fabrics’. We also discuss the huge role that customers play in influencing the vintage market, and how the market needs to be tailored more to meet modern consumer needs. Gigi tells me that the ‘feedback from my customers has been that vintage shops try too hard to be vintage … I think the stubbornness to keep everything vintage is what … I think is a bit of a setback of the vintage industry’.
She also sees the lack of curation in many stores as a huge problem: ‘my customers are mostly busy … and they often feel overwhelmed by a mass of items. I think some shops don’t properly look after the clothes that they are given [like washing them]’. Gigi believes that her model of carefully curating her dressing room, and selling things ‘really lovingly’ is a model that other vintage stores should take on in order to become more successful. She goes on to say that: ‘I would say 80% of my shoppers do not shop vintage, yet they’ve started to come to me so actually … we need more businesses and shops to help people shop better’.
I was intrigued by Gigi’s enthusiasm to modify vintage clothing, subverting from the practises of more traditional vintage shops. So, I asked her whether she thought more of us would shop vintage if there was more of an open-minded approach to modernising vintage. Gigi responded in agreement: ‘I really believe that, because it shows through what I have been able to do… I believe that this has been my biggest feedback from my customers’.
However, she believes that this open minded approach also needs to extend to allowing trends to be observed – which is often a no go in vintage shopping. Gigi argued that: ‘trend has become a bad word and people say “no we shouldn’t follow the trends!” and I understand that (because of consumerism I’m sort of anti-trend) but at the same time … I notice that clothes that I have been holding for years I’ve now brought out and I’m selling them – it’s crazy! So, if the trends [are] affecting our customers, let’s not preach to them, … I think people don’t like being preached at, so I’m actually an observer … For example, I’ve had to shorten some skirts this week … after nobody was buying short skirts off me for over 2 or 3 years … I could be super stubborn and be like “I’m just going to try and make people buy long skirts right now” – but good luck with that!’.
Intrigued to see if the second-hand market was affecting vintage resale, I asked Gigi: is the rise of resale losing the value of true vintage? Gigi’s response was surprisingly refreshing as she said: ‘I personally have no judgement against this, if we are into buying preloved … and if they want to call themselves vintage, so what? … And you know what, if they’re still [selling] preloved and they’re helping then let them. I’m actually rejoiced that every second twelve-year-old has a Depop account and they’re becoming entrepreneurs’, Gigi jokes, ‘I’m super happy for them – but my suppliers are saying they’re making it super difficult for them as they used to find things in charity shops and now there’s nothing because every twelve-year-old is in Oxfam looking for it! … I’m joking about it because even if it’s harder to find things, good for them!’.
A firm believer that any kind of resale is fundamentally positive, Gigi again emphasises the role of the customer in searching for genuine vintage: ‘I believe that it is only our customers that can judge us … and their judgement is quite tough! … Believe me, you cannot fool people … people are not silly, they really want an authentic service! This for me, is the idea of the real free market, the customer always speaks in the end. … if someone is doing something strange people will stop going there, and I really believe that’.
Gigi also runs events in her dressing room, such as sustainability talks which encourage conversations, instead of ‘preaching and blaming’. She says that her customers: ‘said to me that they really liked that the speakers were not really blamey and judgey; we need to have a conversation … by constantly trying to blame each other it’s not going to help; it needs to be something that goes into someone’s heart. Because when you’re blaming someone or really preaching at someone it doesn’t reach their heart – they stop listening’.
Gigi concludes how important conversations were on these issues by saying: ‘just talking to you has made me realise that we need to talk about this more … it’s so hard because we’re so used to consumerism being hammered into us, almost like brainwashing, and suddenly there are not enough vintage shops… We need a million Dressing Rooms!’. Gigi also talks about how conversations are happening between the larger and smaller brands, as the larger are struggling to connect with their customers. What Gigi describes as the ‘egoic’ nature of larger brands, could not be further removed from her own boutique as she says that the dressing room stands for more than environmental sustainability: ‘I’ve put my heart into it, to love people as well’.
Gigi leaves me with the loving message for budding vintage stores that ‘it really needs to be your passion – you can see how excited I get about it. I wouldn’t be able to do it if I just grew the business and made money, it would not excite me to do that’. And with a nod towards the increasing movement towards buying second-hand and vintage clothing she concludes: ‘the old fashion industry is dying – I say long live the new fashion industry!’. So, here’s to a future that has a lot more Gigi’s and a lot more Dressing Rooms.
You can find Gigi’s Dressing Room at 104 Wood Street in Walthamstow. It is open all year around (7 days a week) from 8am – 6pm.
