LET’S GO RETRO – Vintage pieces that tell a story

Statistics say that January is the most depressing month. Đole didn’t like January as well. And who would… After the holidays, Christmas, December partying, Zagrebing, socializing, overeating, and overdrinking… coming back to reality can be (a) painful (kick in the ass). Checking your balance can’t be a thrill either…

Shop owners, those clever foxes, know that as well, and since nothing in life is a coincidence, neither is the fact that sales start in this least popular month… We decided to do some retail therapy on this cold, grey, January morning. Fashion is always a good idea!

But we’ll admit – we’ve sort of had it with big shopping centers, famous brands, uniformed pieces, and drab offer… That’s why our playground of choice this time was a vintage and second hand store placed in the heart of Zagreb – Ulični ormar (“Street store”).

Jurišićeva 16 is an address well-known among everyone who explores and questions his or her style, among people who want pieces that tell a story. When they opened the store five years ago, owners and friends Andreja Latinović and Radmila Grba couldn’t even dream that it would cause such hype and that it would soon become one of the favorite spots for shopping items with an attitude. Actresses, painters, retired ladies, teenage ladies or business women – they will all meet at this address and search through stands looking for a glamourous fifties dress or a suede shirt from the sixties, maybe some leather gloves worn by our grandmas or a cool fur hat suitable for the minus twenties, hysterically announced by weather reporters these days (because it’s winter and it’s superstrange that it’s cold outside, right? “Vintage clothes attract attention and cause admiration in a way that new clothes rarely do today, and that’s the main difference between a vintage and a classical second-hand piece from a few years ago”, says Andreja while we change in the dressing rooms, still sleepy on the early Zagreb morning, but excited and elated by the energy of these pieces. “A great deal of our work boils down to searching for new sources of vintage treasure, and we fill our store with items we find in Western European countries, in person or online”, she says.

And what about fashion inspiration? Who would inspire us better that fashion blogger Barbara Repe, who started her fashion blog ar-ar six years ago, becoming one of the blogging pioneers of our region. Barbie is a fashion blogger and a colorful young lady, in every sense of the word, who build her style matching things that don’t seem to match at first sight, whether it be textures, colors, eras or patterns. She’ll describe her style as eclectic and amusing, adding that her fetish are ugly-beautiful shoes: those that look ugly or weird at first, but also pique your interest. She once went crazy for a pair such as that so she even alarmed her friends from Split (kinda sounds familiar, Tanja…). She had Bershka’s silver shoes travel across the country, just to see that they were – too small. But will power is a force on its own: she managed to “walk them in” because where there’s a will, there’s a way, they say.

I called Barbara, whom I met in a twist of destiny on the highway, on a lovelier and sunnier morning while we were both travelling towards Dalmatia – she with her four-legged kitty cat Kmicek, and myself driving my son all by myself to Split for the first time – after five years. I asked her to join us for a fashion adventure and to compose three interesting, out-of-the-box outfits inspired by vintage.

Ulični ormar was the logical first choice! “I love to do away with prejudices on vintage, especially those about bad karma! Why not have it the other way around – why wouldn’t these pieces bring you good energy and karma of the person who wore them before you?” she says while picking our outfits for this photo shoot. Apart from Ulični ormar, Barbara finds and buys most of her outfits on Hrelić, and if she had to wear a single combo for the rest of her life, it would be a striped shirt and boyfriend, baggie high-waist jeans. With the must-have red lipstick!

She sometimes dreams about the outfits she puts together for photo shoots or for herself, and her boyfriend fiancé Dan often sees B. waking up saying: “Polka dot pants!” instead of, I don’t know – good morning. 😀

She draws inspiration from the disco era and the 70s because she loves crazy, strong colors, unusual patterns, suede, brocade, bell-bottoms, glam… She’ll soon be styling her own wedding, and you can bet it would be anything but classical – she’ll probably say I do clad in gold sequins and a micro-mini…

Until that important day comes, we managed to do away with monotony (and prejudices, I hope) and had great fun as girls do best – with unusual fashion combinations.

Take a look!