Elena Kamai, Buyer Oldich Dress & Drink
RECENTLY WE TOLDwhat is vintage, how it differs from second-hand and how things are with it in Russia, and also listed 10 rules for dealing with vintage now. It is impossible not to notice that over the past two years, a dozen vintage projects have appeared of a completely different format: from online stores to studios, where they come by personal recording, and showrooms. Many of them take part in the Lambada market specializing in vintage (and not only), the new season of which will take place this weekend, December 21 and 22, in the Tsvetnoy department store. We asked several of them about what is happening with the vintage in Moscow, why they like things from past eras and how to wear them in 2013.
Elena Kamai
Buyer Oldich Dress & Drink and Founder of Lambada Market
Masha Hayward has thought up to make a large space - vintage shop, bar, restaurant, dance and concerts. Then it all sounded unreal. And cool.
We have practically no vintage stores, if measured by European standards. Which is quite natural: in Russia there is a big problem with history. Not in the sense that it was not, but in the fact that we lived a separate, closed from the rest of the world life, behind the iron curtain. That is, vintage, which is now mostly purchased and sold, is absent from us as a class: in the 1920s – 80s it simply dissolved in the Soviet Union. Therefore, all that we have is imported. It is difficult to bring and very few people interested. Therefore, vintage stores so little. I really like Olya Samodumova with "Rewind", the project La Reserve, the shop of the Hodyush sisters and the girls from "The Contrabass". They are all participants of the Lambada Market and, above all, very good people. Understand what they are doing and why.
I loved vintage a few years ago in London. I saw Brick Lane - and everything, like a puzzle, came together: history, place, people, consumer culture. In general, I must admit, I moved to stories and stories. Therefore, the old things, like good literature, for me are pieces of a single puzzle, which add up to something called "The Universe of Lena Kamai". Shop Oldich Dress & Drink began to do in the winter of 2012. The idea was given by Masha Hayward. She thought up to make a large space - vintage shop, bar, restaurant, dance and concerts. Then it all sounded unreal. And cool. Through friends, Masha found us, showed us a room on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 11, we were very inspired and started working. All ideas were connected only with London and a place that could easily be there, but it would be here. London is an amazing city, stuffed with conventions, traditions, with a queen, a brood of princes and princesses, with all this grand literature, but at the same time absolutely modern and wildly fashionable. Alive. Traditions are not conserved and do not languish, do not die off as something unnecessary, but are organically transformed into the new. All the ancestors' memory, a certain strong background of the new world - with Indian food, raids in Hackney Wick, Downtown Abbey, the program Never Mind The Buzzcocks, weekends in the Lake District and all that other. We wanted to broadcast that even if we didn’t have these 70 years, the memory of our ancestors is alive in us.
Europe, England, America - our main places of purchase of clothes. To be precise - Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels, New York. But sometimes it is funny: Masha was in South Africa and found amazing jewelry there. We look at everything: from large fleece to second-hand and shops. As a rule, all good things are selected at the stage of large warehouses. There are also special hunters to which they either bring things, or they themselves travel around the suburbs and collect them. We communicate with such suppliers. Plus auctions - there are some incredible things with extraordinary stories. Vintage in the store is always a selection of the owner and buyer. And this is always a personal understanding and nothing else. It is important to present the thing in the store, to understand who it can approach. Prices start at 500 rubles. The average price of a thing is 5 thousand, and for super-rare models from auctions, prices can go up to 150 thousand. But in this case it will be quite obvious why this thing is worth so much: it will be collectible.
visagiste: Julia Timonina
Stylist:Daria Kuzminova
Photographer: Andrey Gerasimchuk
Wonderzine is grateful to the NAKED studios for their help in filming.