Introducing...

On this lovely ‘hot’, ‘sunny’ and definitely NOT rainy bank holiday Monday in Leeds*, I thought id take the opportunity to finally write up my first blog post for the Affordable Vintage Fair in the form of a personal introduction and hopefully take like a duck to water and consequently become the next Tavi (minus the 13 year old bit. Although I have been told I look young for my age...)

So firstly, hello! I’m Sam and I help organise the bookings and promotion for The Affordable Vintage Fair. I am a great lover of vintage (as you may have expected), particularly anything that channels the edgy Spanish Harlem influenced styling’s of the Ronnettes with their big beehives and even bigger eyelashes (they used to have competitions in the dressing rooms to see who could have the biggest beehive or the longest lashes) : -

To the slightly more prim and often masculine style of the Shangri-la’s with their peter pan collars, pussy bows and playful take on men’s clothing, the picture below on the right being a great example of this : -

In fact, here I am at Leeds fest '07 trying to work that pussy bow/peter pan collar look: -

Although I have actually found myself channelling the 90’s recently (blame Selfridges introducing 90’s vintage into its concept store) with a grungy and distressed grey oversized denim jacket my brother bought in the mid 90’s, a leather yin/yang necklace and John Lennon circular sunglasses, two items of which can be seen in the pic below. I just wonder though whether the poster in the background is trying to tell me that I need to think again on whether channelling the 90’s really is such a great idea...

Overall though, I love mixing it all up and creating something that doesn’t look like it comes from just one era but instead takes elements from many and combines them together to create something new. Its the creativity that vintage allows for which is great; its the not knowing what you may find when rifling through a rail or box of vintage, the fact that you are unlikely to find the exact same item elsewhere and that you can often only get it in the shape and size that you find it in so its up to you to play around with it to make it work. Fantastic!

My story with the vintage fair began at the tender age of 18 when I arrived from the bright lights of Worcester (ahem) to the even brighter lights of Leeds to study politics at Leeds Uni. Having been starved of anything resembling vintage unless it was a lucky find in a charity or second hand shop, to say that I got excited when I heard they actually had an affordable vintage FAIR in Leeds would be a bit of an understatement as there may have been quite a lot of squealing involved.

I was young, don’t judge me.

I’d previously earnt most of my pocket money since the age of 16 selling vintage on eBay that Id sourced from in and around Worcester, so realising that the fair was a chance to sell my items in person, I jumped at the opportunity. But unfortunately, the money I made from this wasn’t enough to fund my ever expanding wardrobe and hedonistic student lifestyle so when I heard that Judy was looking for someone to help promote the vintage fairs in Leeds, I went for the job. Fast forward 3 years to when I became a lowly graduate, I was fortunate enough to be taken pity on by the lovely Judy who took me under her wing and fed me Marks and Spencer’s tit bits while I helped manage the promotional side of the fairs and then soon after that, the bookings for the fairs.

So that’s my story, a tale of humble beginnings, 90’s clothes and marks and Spencer’s Gefilte fish balls (they are amazing, I highly recommend them!) This will hopefully not be the last you hear from me as I have a couple of ideas for future blog posts but in the meantime, thanks for reading :)

Sam x

*DISCLAIMER: All weather reports appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real weather is purely coincidental.