How did you get into vintage fashion?

I have always been an “old soul”, an only child raised by older parents who schooled me in good music and films. I was a bit of a hippie as a kid. I loved The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix and wanted my room to be decorated with lava lamps and VW buses. But I would say my love of vintage fashion started with theatre! I was a freshman in high school when I got to star in a play called “Moon Over Buffalo” which was set in the mid-50s. We had to provide our own costumes, so my mom took me to a vintage shop downtown and I tried on my first true vintage dress. I felt like myself for the first time ever. Coincidentally, I also wore a red wig for this show which was the first time I ever saw myself with red hair. I feel like that was the jumping-off point for the person I became.

You have a love for spooky stuff. How do you go about combining vintage and “spooky” together in your wardrobe to create outfits that feel most like you?

There is nothing I love more in this world than the place where vintage and spooky meet!! I look for pieces that have vintage silhouettes but bold spooky patterns. Luckily we have great brands like Vixen and La Femme en Noire who give us beautiful quality pieces in this vein year round! But even in my less spooky attire, I look for ways to incorporate subtle scare factors. My favourite accessories right now are my collection of giant spooky acrylic earrings!

What is most important to you about your wardrobe and how you present yourself in your clothes?

I would say that in the last 2 years I have fallen away from being so concerned with “looking authentically vintage” and what has become most important to me is having fun when I get dressed every day. As a person who has struggled with body image their entire life, my clothes are now a way of celebrating how I show up in the world and not being afraid to be seen and take up space. I hope that when other people look at me they feed off of my joy and feel like they can wear anything they want, too!

What is your experience being a plus-size woman in the vintage community? 

I have found the community, as a whole, to be mostly celebratory of all bodies and types of people. I’ve been very happy to see the  #vintagestylenotvintagevalues movement in the last few years. Unfortunately, this style is inherently based in thinness and whiteness, but I think as a community we are really working to break that. I hope if you are reading this and you don’t already follow all of our many BIPOC, fat, and queer vintage creators that you will go and seek them out and support their work.

Do you have any fashion staples that you would recommend someone get who is just getting into vintage?

I know vintage can be intimidating when you’re first starting out, especially if you are plus size or on a budget. The way I started out was by kind of bending modern clothes into looking more vintage; buying basics like circle skirts, cardigans, peasant tops, etc. You can get a lot of mileage out of these pieces until you are ready to invest in some statement pieces once you know what you really like. Also, I can’t say enough about taking the time to learn how to style your hair. You can take a plain Jane outfit from a 2 to a 10 just by adding a vintage hairstyle, and that doesn’t cost you a thing! And of course, the best accessory is always confidence!!