There are lots of vintage clothing shops. Some specialise in designer labels, some chase rare pieces and some seem remarkably good at finding a jacket for £15 and putting it on a rail for £95. I hope Velvet Revival is a little different.
When we opened our store in Woking, we didn’t want to create another shop filled with rails of old clothes and a few retro posters on the walls. We wanted to build something around a much simpler idea: clothes deserve to be worn, not thrown away. Pretty much everything we do has grown from that. We’re trying to rehome clothes, not hold them hostage
Our approach to pricing is probably one of the biggest differences. Yes, we’re a business and obviously we need to make money. But the purpose of buying vintage and preloved clothing is ultimately to get those clothes back onto somebody’s back.
I’d rather sell a great jacket for £30 to someone who absolutely loves it than price it at £70 because that’s what somebody on the internet thinks it’s worth and watch it sit on the rail for six months.
A garment hanging indefinitely in a vintage shop isn’t being reused. It’s just being stored somewhere different. We want our stock to move, be worn, get dirty, go to gigs, get taken on holiday, be borrowed by someone’s mate and occasionally end up on the bedroom floor. That’s what clothes are for isn’t it?.
We don’t just sell the perfect stuff
Vintage clothing has lived a life. Sometimes it arrives with a broken zip. Sometimes it’s covered in bobbles. Sometimes it’s stained, missing a button or generally looks as though its previous owner had a considerably more exciting social life than we do. Where possible, we’ll clean it, repair it and give it another chance. We’ve had pieces that looked destined for the textile recycling pile that have turned into some of our favourite garments, such as the Cuthberth Facer jacket which can be found in our Hall of Fame.
That matters because sustainability isn’t just about buying a vintage T-shirt instead of a new one. It’s about keeping existing clothing useful for as long as possible.
We love the stories
One of the best things about vintage clothing is that occasionally something comes through the door that makes you stop. We’ve found 1970s Nike pieces, American varsity jackets, unusual sportswear, match-worn clothing and leather jackets that have somehow survived decades.
We’ve even had a leather jacket more than 20 years old that still had its original tags attached. It had apparently never been worn, probably because the zip was damaged. More than two decades later, it was still simultaneously vintage and brand new. A proper unicorn. That’s the side of vintage that fascinates us. Sometimes you’re not simply buying a jacket. You’re becoming the next person in its story.
Sustainability isn’t a slogan for us
You’ll see plenty of businesses talking about sustainability. We wanted to do a little more than put a green leaf on the website. We’ve created free sustainability tools that help people think about the environmental impact of their wardrobes, clothing lifespan, waste, water and carbon. We write about textile waste, fast fashion, garment quality, plastics in clothing, repair and reuse.
We also try to make those subjects understandable. Sustainability doesn’t need to involve somebody pointing angrily at a graph while making you feel guilty about owning a polyester jumper. It can simply start with one question:
Do I really need to throw this away? Very often, the answer is no.
We’re not vintage snobs
We love genuinely old and unusual clothing, but we’re not going to inspect the stitching on your sweatshirt and demand to see its birth certificate.
Velvet Revival includes vintage, preloved and reworked clothing because we think the important question is less about whether something meets an arbitrary definition of “vintage” and more about whether it’s good enough to be worn again.
If it’s cool, interesting, unusual, beautifully made or simply deserves another owner, we’re interested.
Fashion should be fun. It shouldn’t require an entrance exam.
Sometimes we’re not really a shop at all
This might be the biggest difference.
We’ve had live music in the store. We’ve run ReFashioned workshops where people can customise and upcycle clothing. We’ve displayed artwork. We’ve offered space for community activities and events. Sometimes people come in and don’t buy anything. And that’s fine because this is a community space where we end up discussing local and environmental issues as well as debating sporting events and even playing chess!
We want Velvet Revival to be somewhere people actually enjoy visiting rather than somewhere designed solely to extract a transaction from everyone who walks through the door. High streets need more places where things happen and we’re trying to create one.
We don’t take ourselves too seriously
This is also why our website contains serious information about textile waste alongside calculators answering questions such as “How Vintage Am I?”, “Should I Buy Another Jacket?”, “Am I a Hipster?” and the scientifically important “Does It Go With Crocs?”
For the record, the answer to the last one is always no! Nothing goes with Crocs ok!
We can care deeply about sustainability without becoming incredibly boring about it. In fact, we think people are far more likely to think differently about clothing if the conversation is interesting, accessible and occasionally ridiculous.
The shop has a personality because actual people run it
There isn’t a corporate brand manual explaining exactly how rebellious we’re permitted to be. Some ideas work brilliantly. Some are ridiculous. Occasionally an idea manages to be both. That’s part of the point as independent shops should feel independent.
So what actually makes Velvet Revival different?
We’re a vintage shop, but we’re also becoming something else. We’re part clothing store, part sustainability project, part repair-and-reuse experiment, part community space and occasionally part music venue. We’re interested in the history of the clothes that arrive and what happens to them next. Most importantly, we don’t want the best pieces sitting behind glass with enormous price tags. We want them back out in the world.
Because ultimately Velvet Revival isn’t really about selling old clothes.
It’s about giving clothes another life — and making that far more interesting than buying new ones.