Published in july 2023,
http://officemagazine.net/stroll-through-womens-history-museum
I smell you on my skin, stranger. Stains recast themselves in fondness, fear and sweat soaked fibers, memories of you abstracted into shapes and backwood scents, wraithlike alterations. I check the pockets for pieces of you and find an old gum wrapper, a bottle cap, a map for what’s to come, – shelter, the long night, heartbreak and fascination, a new way home. The care tag has not only furrowed but faded beyond recognition, but what is proper care but a feeling? Thirty year old polyester caresses just like calloused hands, denim softens like blades of grass, silk yearns – past lifetimes breathe a breath, who knows about reincarnation? Tilting back and forth, but as the bridge atrophies, I can feel you in these jeans.
Walking up the tangerine-hued staircase to the third floor at 244 Canal Street, you can’t help but glance in the mirror across the walls. To see yourself reflected upon ascension is a metaphorical and prophetic experience as you enter the newly realized world of Women’s History Museum’s Vintage Shop. Founded by Amanda and Mattie, the selection of garments presents a schismatic understanding of fashion’s history, originating a landscape in which camp is normcore and luxury is not reflected in price, but marvel. As the pair continues to design for their own label founded in 2015, Women’s History Museum, the Vintage Shop extends from this point of genesis – but ironically, as a reflection of itself. Many of the pieces sold in-shop have yielded inspiration for patterns for new silhouettes and collections past. Having always thought of their collections as archival, museum-worthy digs culled from the far corners of the early internet, as the rest of the world catches up via Depop, Amanda and Mattie have cemented themselves as authorities on the subject.
As we enter an era of post-core aesthetics and we collage aesthetics on our bodies the way 90s kids cut out magazines for their walls, the selection that Women’s History Museum presents to the retail landscape reminds us that getting dressed can still be a sentimental act.
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Lindsey– Congrats on the store opening! I know you have spoken about the impact of New York, what it means to have and find your own relationship to this city and I’m wondering how that ties into your own understanding of the concept of home? The store will also probably feel home to your community as well.
Amanda– Well, New York feels like home for sure, I think for both of us. I'm from the Bronx so I've always lived in New York City so more specifically, I would say New York City feels like home. Mattie is from Virginia.
Mattie– Yeah, but I’ve lived here for most of my life at this point.
Amanda– It's a typical New Yorker thing where you gripe and complain about the many inconveniences of living in New York City – financially, physically, visually – but it's really all about the people here, the people here feel like home, which is cliche but there's a reason why people come here. Over the years through our projects, we've really made a little family and it's been a way to meet people and it’s continued to be that way.
Totally, so why did now feel like the right time to open a permanent space? Was it due to the residual and invigorating energy that spilled over from the vintage pop-ups you’d been doing?
Amanda– We've always dreamed about having a store but when we first met, we wanted to make a magazine, that was the first thing that we thought we’d collaborate on but it didn’t feel feasible. This was 2010, magazines were collapsing and online publications weren’t really a thing yet so we realized it wasn’t realistic, nor did we have the overhead for it. In lieu of that, we debated having a fashion line and a store and one of the ways we related when we first met was through shopping.
I feel like we both had a different but obsessive relationship to shopping. After COVID, there seems to be a renewed interest in fashion and vintage especially with the younger generation, which is really cool, but that was not the case years ago. When we were in college, it did not feel like people were interested in vintage clothing or even had brand knowledge.
Why do you think that is?
Amanda– I think the younger generation had a lot of time during COVID to research. We always say that it felt like everyone got a makeover as there was more time to assess how you looked. The vintage store that we had started online was born during COVID, partly because we had lost our jobs and we were at home and trying to find new sources of income, but also because there seemed to be this interest in vintage clothing, which we both knew a lot about. We started having the pop-ups and began to think of it as an actual reality.
Mattie– Vintage now is so much more desirable than what's being manufactured now. I feel like the fashion world is just not very aspirational, at least, to me. A huge part of what we do with our design and in our art practice is collaging elements from the past that we want to see resurface or to revisit. It’s a natural extension of how we work and is a way to support ourselves and our designs in a way that can’t be done solely by us making new things; it’s also not a reality in this economy and world at this point.
When you guys are talking about the younger generation doing research or these notions of what feels aspirational, people have in tandem developed these post-core aesthetics where they’ll subscribe to things without having an understanding of them. When you guys were talking about collage and the inferred collisions, it’s knowing how to put things together based on connection. People haven’t heard of Beauty: Beast and they’ll drop $300 because it’s a “cute shirt” but I feel like you all would want it to go to a good home too.
Mattie– We’re grateful that people are going to spend that on whatever we're selling. It’s cool because people have to go through their own stages in their personal style of not really knowing what they like. I've certainly gone through many different reincarnations but also the way technology, Instagram and the internet have progressively morphed society, it is a way of collaging aesthetics to the point where it’s almost too easy to have.
Amanda– Yeah, those clashes are being created for you by someone else which can make people's personal style feel a little empty or a little less their own because you’re not drawing the connections through intuition or your own sensibilities. You can feel that with certain people where obviously, they saw someone they follow wear the same combination of an outfit and then you're like, ‘I want to get the same things.’
It’s very complicated because it’s cool that things that we’ve valued for a long time now feel valued and we can economize on our expertise but, at the same time, it’s a side-eye situation.
Yeah totally, it’s clout culture and when you guys were talking about aspirations or what feels aspirational, for a lot of people now it’s just about being thought of as “cool” or relevant, thoughts?
Mattie– It was such a shock reemerging from COVID in the city and being like, whoa, it didn't really feel like it was the “cool Olympics” the way it does now. Of course, yes, being cool is important and is a part of being in New York but the pure volume and density of people who seemingly got a new look during COVID was astounding. There was no story behind their looks either, no trajectory of self-creation or discovery. People were peacocking around New York but didn’t actually have style.
Amanda– Also, I feel like men and boys being interested in fashion feels very new to me. There's so many vintage sellers who are straight, cis men and it’s like dude, when the hell did this happen? Men really got a makeover and are now interested in labels which was just not a thing before.
What do you think that signifies or reflects culturally?
Mattie– I really do think the time spent alone during COVID created this kind of nouveau dandy.
Amanda– Very nouveau dandy! I wonder if it had to do with the times being so bleak in a lot of ways and maybe it’s a response to that? Like looking back at the 1920s or something, where the depression begets…
Mattie– … a need to escape reality. We were just saying last night walking through New York how everything is either a deluxe weed store or a vintage store and those are the only two businesses that are viable – those are really escapist things.
Amanda– In a lot of ways, I think human beings have a lot more to create but at the same time, we have already created a lot. Have we now gone too far in our capacity to make things that people want to instead go back to what's already been made?
Mattie– A state of devolution. We’re at max capacity for creating novelty, which could be positive if it involves self-reflection into the past.
Yeah and I think that reflects this movement towards the hyperniche where curation becomes ultimately about resonance, 360-aesthetics and thus, an experience that can be both intimate and sustainable.
Amanda– Totally and with more depth. Everything feels a bit hollow now and it's kind of like people are simply buying into depth knowing that there’s already a story to what they’re getting.
How much of that reflects this wider inability to enjoy or interact with art or each other because we feel constantly surveilled or watched? How does this role of spectacle play into it all?
Amanda– I wish we could go back in time a bit. I know the internet is such a tool, it's helped me make so many relationships and I don't know where I'd be without it so it's hard to say but at the same time, giving up privacy for those positive things? I wish I could go to a place where I didn't feel like people knew what I was doing all the time and vice versa. It's a less romantic and real way to live, we're all living real life and then living a life that's projected simultaneously.
Mattie– The internet has such a duality to it where it is indeed this tool for human beings to connect, to differentiate themselves and has allowed for this explosion of self-knowledge which couldn't have happened without it; not to mention the many communities that are able to find each other because of it and I think that's incredible. But there's this immune, sick part of our reality and hyper-capitalist society that seizes upon individuality and we're being watched all the time, so they can profit off of human differentiation. It's very perverse and brings us to the other hot topic of AI which is going to change creation and creativity as a whole too, making it quicker and easier. I was listening to this astrology podcast that talked about the Centaur Theory which addresses how humans interact with technology and the same way a centaur needs the human torso, technology still needs a human to make it work.
Right and WHM has always been so singular in its branding but we’re now seeing that every brand and company alike is concerned with the same pillars that represent wokeness, community, shared values etc. to the point where everything gets flattened out.
Amanda– My god, so much has happened and I’m happy we started when we did because there really weren't that many outsider brands then, at least to our knowledge, that were in this sphere. Now there are thousands and everyone has a fashion line. To be able to have made stuff in a time where we were exposed to less things was a luxury because seeing so much stuff is like having static interference of your creativity and it's hard to develop your own voice as you're getting bombarded. It’s shocking to see how the Internet has created a whole fashion world that didn't exist before. That's another reason we’re starting an in-person store because it is nice to have a space where people can actually engage with people on a personal level when everything is so cyber.
Mattie– I don't know if I could function as a young person like that.
Amanda– New York is already such a hard place to navigate socially, it always has been because it is so cutthroat and there’s a lot of big personalities in a small space but I encounter a lot more social awkwardness.
Even when Mattie mentioned “reincarnations,” I think about the implications of being able to cultivate the self while also having to combat the self-censorship that comes with simply existing in the world today. If you had to give verbal form to the stages of reincarnation you’ve been through, can you?
Mattie– I feel like when we became friends at NYU, that was a big thing for us. I grew up Mormon and was always interested in fashion but was definitely surveilled by my community and family about how I was dressing and it was all about modesty for women. I was always very sexualized in one way but then was part of this religion so I received a lot of mixed messages on top of the mixed messages you already receive simply being a woman. Meeting Amanda was definitely a breakthrough moment and it represented having and finding this shared language of expressing ourselves through clothing. We were also in school at a time when people weren’t into clothing in the same way so we were very much in our own world.
Amanda– I’m just thinking of reincarnation in terms of our careers, social media and online presence and I feel like people feel less flexibility in their careers or image because you get pigeon-holed into being one version of yourself. From when we've met until now, we've always been interested in evolving, in doing different things and we’ve never been limited to just one thing. The vintage store is a reincarnation in some ways, we didn’t shy away from doing it for fear of distilling the message or vision etc.
Mattie– We wouldn’t be able to do our own line and art practice without doing the vintage store, there’s no way. Up to this point, we have always been self-funded. Every single fashion show we did while we were simultaneously working a day job, making little to nothing. We're really excited to do a new collection which we're working towards for September, but looking back at all the work that we've made up to this point, it’s just so insane. We were doing it off-calendar and in our own way, but still, it was just totally unsustainable. Now we're able to have this dream be a reality because of the store.
Amanda– And it helps us with our other creative ambitions by creating a more feasible plan for the future and a way to do everything. The way social media is and how people are conditioned now, people seemingly don't think in that way and feel as if you have to just do one thing, one craft, one medium, but sometimes you have to go naturally with what seems to work with where you’re at.
Right and it always depends on whose lens you're looking through. In curating the vintage selections and having an eye for that, how does that play into the design of the collections?
Mattie– We made a mini-collection when we did a film last year but we haven't shown a runway collection since before COVID which was before we started the vintage store. Shopping and having this kind of unofficial archive and collection of things has always been a part of how we design. Our favorite pieces will inform how we want to make a pattern so it’s definitely related.
Amanda– Even the name came from us talking about our ‘museum” which was our clothes, like back in 2014. Everyone has an archive now so it’s more of a contrived concept but we’ve always been informed by vintage and things that have happened, which I mean every designer is, but there’s more of an acknowledgement of that in our process and the way we work.
Mattie– Also back to your question about reincarnation, I feel like both of us or all of us can only keep that many clothes when you live in New York due to the space so we've gone through so many iterations of purging our closets. Even when we were still in school with little to no closet space, we were obsessed with it being our archive or museum.
I’m a person who gets very attached to things so even if I’m not wearing something, I can’t get rid of it. Outside of buying and selling, what are your own relationships to having to say goodbye?
Mattie– I definitely keep more stuff but I still don't have that much stuff. Amanda is somebody who's much more like, okay, that identity is in the trash, I'm going with this other thing now. It's interesting because when you shed a skin and get a new palette that you're into and a new collection of things, there’s still a thread through your style. It won't necessarily be apparent at first, but looking back, there's still trajectory and continuity to it.
Amanda– Yeah I’m much more temporal and less sentimental, I need space to be in a new headspace and maybe it’s a reaction to how my parents are as they keep a lot of stuff. There's something weird with me where I'm like, it has to go. I'm someone who dresses like a cartoon character where I’ll wear the same rotation of outfits for a year, so when I've worn that to death it’s done. It’s like a horcrux that embodies a job, a relationship, a time where you’re like I don't want to be in that space anymore.
There are so many shops now but what do you think sets you guys apart?
Amanda– Well I mean, our curation is the best [laughs]. I feel like we have doctorates in shopping or something. I've been internet shopping since I was 12 years old, I’ve been training for years for this, I feel educated in the science of buying vintage. That amount of time invested has prepared me and Mattie’s been working in vintage stores for many years.
Mattie– Even though I was raised Mormon, my family is very image conscious but Amanda’s family wasn’t so she had to carve that out in isolation on her laptop. My mom and grandma were obsessed with department stores and so I knew about designers through them. In middle school I was obsessed with French Vogue and glossy magazines, I cut them up and made weird collages all the time. I never internet shopped until I got into antique clothing which I was obsessed with and movies were my entry point into vintage.
Yeah and it’s interesting how you guys said that you wanted to initially make a magazine because even looking around at the walls now, they do resemble a collage of sorts and it’s akin to the process you’ve been working through with your art project etc. It’s all been ripped and put back together to create something new, a collection, an issue, whatever it is.
Mattie– I'm glad that you noticed the walls because I feel like the connection you’re making makes a lot of sense but to me, it's this idea of archeology that we’re obsessed with, this sense of digging, unearthing.
Amanda– The whole concept of the store interior is something we're still figuring out but initially it was to make everything look aged, we’ve been interested in that idea for a long time. It’s going to materialize as time goes on and people have come to this location before when it was another business and the thing about New York is that things have a way of living many lives.