Meet Stephanie King, Sustainable Stylist and founder of online clothing boutique, Painted Bird Vintage, and her latest venture, The Aviary.
Why is wearing vintage so important to you?
Wearing vintage is about provenance. The pieces were created pre-fast fashion, so, they’re integrous and the truly authentic sustainable and ethical fashion choice. Vintage is a fashion, style and dressing option without consumptive guilt. Clothing that was created with love sewn into the threads by our grandmothers, aunties, mothers, fathers, and uncles. A piece might have been crafted in anticipation of a life event or for a long-awaited triste. History lives behind each piece making each of them absolute treasures. True vintage is designed to flatter the wearer. The craft of a home seamstresses, tailor, or fashion designer created necklines, waists and hemlines from fabrics that crossed boundaries between luxe, frugality and function to produce fabulous results!
What’s your favourite decade?
We stock styles from the 40s to the 90s, but I love 60s and 70s the most because they spell fashion freedom from earlier constraints. The development in necklines, tailoring, waists and straight cuts, hem lengths, the testing of pattern, style, and embellishments from those eras speak volumes. They’re truly reflective of where our fashion in history has taken us, at least within my lifetime.
How do questions of sustainability play into your business model?
I love to see and support designers around the world, both emerging and existing, who are re-inventing fashion with what’s already in circulation. Relaunching era trends and looks certainly helps with the concept of circularity. Yet we can always do more. Look at the overflowing landfills, charities, warehouses full of unused fabrics, and mountains of garments displayed in stores. We could likely sustainably clothe the world for many years before needing to produce any more new-from-new clothing. Designers need to create using their incredible imaginative skills but must balance the ‘amount’ and ‘with what’. In our business model, vintage is the creme de la crème of existing fashion and sits right up there with some luxury brands pre-fast fashion. Sustainability at Painted Bird Vintage in its most raw form means ‘here’s the best so you can use what you have’. Just look at our ever-growing online stock of over 3,000 vintage pieces to see incredible examples of garments made almost 70 years ago that look like the day they were made!
Tell us more about latest move, The Aviary.
Needing to pivot, adapt, and hold on tight while always looking in the side view mirror to survive has been de rigour for many SMEs during Covid. Now I’m innovating and prioritising our ‘why’ and continuing to grow it from the roots up. The Aviary in Auckland, is the country’s first of its kind. A boutique fitting room experience designed to cater for those easing themselves into vintage shopping online with the final security of being able to ‘try on’. We also offer a complimentary personal stylist as your host in an entirely private space. Because vintage was made to fit your form, when you come to The Aviary, we will happily measure you as part of the service so that when you do shop with us you have a starting point for smart shopping. The bonus? When you’re looking at our curation, you can easily see if it will likely fit.
Vintage is a fashion, style and dressing option without consumptive guilt.
What are your hopes for Painted Bird Vintage and The Aviary?
The face of retail has changed from bricks and mortar to online, pop-ups and now to a combination of all three. We live in fluidity now that demands flexibility. The Aviary means, regardless of pandemics, trends, and any unforeseen challenges, we have futureproofed to always have the doors open for our customers. Offering a curation of wearable, on trend, high-end vintage and retro means we’re contributing with the smallest fashion footprint that we can. We offer the best vintage around, try to raise the bar for perceptions and misconceptions around vintage and re-loved clothing, and have it all totally accessible to all who wish to wear ‘good’ fashion.
Quick vintage shopping tip?
Be open to trying vintage that may not be what you thought you were looking for. Trying on the unusual is part of the fun! If the fabric resonates, or the cut or even just the embellishments, spin your dials, just try it. Sometimes your most treasured finds will be those things you saw on the off chance when you stopped by your favourite vintage store or browsed true vintage online. In 99% of the cases, that vintage piece you saw and fell in love with, will be the only one of its kind and that uniqueness is one of the things that will make it special, worn and loved by you. After all, true vintage was made to be worn, not just sold. And therein lies one of the key differences vintage has to fast fashion.
Visit Verve online to read the full interview with Stephanie.
Follow @paintedbirdnz or visit her online store paintedbird.nz
