82 23rd June 2012 fairs & markets
No compromise on quality, rules Sally as vintage fashion splits
Joan Porter reports
THE upcoming Leeds Vintage Fashion Fair could answer a key question which splits this specialist trade: can top-quality, but often pricy, material prosper outside London amid cheaper, lower- to middle-range competition in this age of austerity? Back in 2005 Sally Woodhead and
Samantha Makin moved to Yorkshire from London and cornered the vintage scene in Leeds when they launched the 50-dealer Leeds Vintage Fashion Fair, selling fashion clothing from the 1900s to the 1980s at the city’s impressive Victorian town hall. Now the city and county are top-heavy with competitors and Sally and Sam are feeling the pinch. In Leeds, the big gun is Judy Berger
with her Affordable Vintage Fashion Fairs, which sell vintage and reworked clothes as well as kilo sales – a big attraction to the thousands of students at Leeds’ three universities – selling old clothes by weight from the ‘60s upwards at £15 per kilo. Then there’s the very popular vintage
fair at Gemma’s Hospice in the city, held to raise money for the hospice. Judy is also in York, as is Keeley
Harris with her Discover Vintage fairs, while Caroline Brown runs her Rose and Brown’s rather upmarket vintage fashion fairs at Saltaire, just outside Leeds. So, what’s Sally’s take on all this? “The
Right: these elegant 1950s day dresses for sale at a recent Leeds Vintage Fashion Fair represent the quality end of the vintage fair market which organisers Sally Woodhead and Samantha Makin fear is heading for overload and downgrade.
Alan gets it all sewn up at Sandown
ORGANISER Alan Kipping can be relied on for ideas to promote his antiques and vintage fairs at Sandown Park. Last year, when a fair coincided with a national angling show at the Surrey
racecourse, he organised a small angling antiques section within his fair to which the national show ticketholders got free entry – boosting Alan’s gate considerably. This year, his Sunday, June 24 fair is on while the National Quilt Championships are at the racecourse, so he is running a quilting and sewing antiques special and offering quilt fans the same free-entry deal. Exhibitors at Alan’s fair include thimble queen Elizabeth Waicocksi from
Above: a c.1880, 2in (5cm) brass hat box needlecase by Birmingham manufacturer Avery, who produced collectable figural brass needlecases between 1868 and 1889. At Alan Kipping’s fair, specialist dealer Sylvie Collett is asking £225 for this example.
problem with the other fairs, apart from Rose and Brown’s in Saltaire, is they are ‘buy in bulk and buy it cheap’-type fairs with lots of £5 rails. “That includes vintage and retro fairs in
York, Harrogate and Halifax, plus several in Manchester, Liverpool and Chester, all of which makes it increasingly difficult for us to keep going.” People are sometimes shocked by
the Leeds Vintage Fair prices, says Sally, but that’s because they don’t seem to realise that the stock on offer is top-end compared to other fairs.
London and Kent-based Erna Hiscock and John Shepherd with American quilts from the mid- to late-19th century, priced from £120 to £600. Chris Bates from Gloucestershire has recently acquired two large collections
of sewing antiques likely to attract plenty of customers to his three stands and Sylvie Collett from Sleaford in Lincolnshire, one of the UK’S top dealers in sewing antiques, has some nice pieces for sale, including a rare c.1900 Black Forest bear sewing stand at £425. Contact Alan on 020 7249 4050.
“We’ve seen a massive drop in good
stallholders, with just ten who have been with us from the beginning, while the rest just come and go.” Such is the lack of understanding of
what vintage fashion is that some new dealers who want to stand at Sally’s and Sam’s fairs are keen to sell early Primark. Now, Sally and Sam are refocusing
and going all out to woo more quality exhibitors and edge out standholders who don’t deliver the standards the organisers started out with but have had to compromise on to keep up the dealer
‘Too many events are opening that are not vetted’
ONE long-time standholder at the Leeds Vintage Fashion Fair is Maggie Harding from Manchester, who sells original Victorian pieces up to the 1960s, including designer labels at prices up to £400. Her customers are designers, collectors, museums and
celebrities, including actresses Maggie Smith and Judy Dench.
Maggie said: “Too many events are opening that are not
vetted and, in turn, the quality of stock is disappearing. People go to these and are disappointed by what they see. “I will always support fairs which support stallholders who
want to continue collecting and selling true vintage, pieces which hold their value, don’t date, are classic and collectable; the genuine article and not reworked pieces or retro copies.”
numbers. They will also target the cream of their once-core buying market which includes the top-end shoppers and their children who buy at Harvey Nichols in Leeds which, in 1996, became the first of the fashion giant’s stores to open outside London. The Leeds Vintage Fashion Fair is held
four times a year at Leeds Town Hall with the next on Sunday, July 27. Contact Sally on 07732 031 407. n What is your view of the vintage
fashion market? Is quality becoming an issue? Email
joanporter@atgmedia.com
Update
IN ATG No 2044 we omitted the contact number for Jane Alexander’s first quality monthly antiques fair at Cobham Village Hall, Surrey on Saturday, June 30 under the name Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs. It is 07952 689717 Apologies.
send fair s and mark ets information to joan porter at
fairs@atgmedia.com
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