{"id":3889,"date":"2009-05-27T08:41:09","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T12:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/?p=3889"},"modified":"2019-06-25T07:23:04","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T11:23:04","slug":"vintage-shop-eponymy-bergen-st-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/3889\/vintage-shop-eponymy-bergen-st-brooklyn\/","title":{"rendered":"A Walk Down Brooklyn\u2019s Bergen Street: Second Stop, The Funky Vintage Shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second of five interviews<\/a> with small business owners at their boutique shops on Bergen Street, Brooklyn. <\/em><\/p>\n

Shop:<\/strong> Eponymy<\/p>\n

Wares:<\/strong> Modern and vintage women\u2019s clothing, antiques, artwork.<\/p>\n

Location:<\/strong> 466 Bergen Street<\/p>\n

Andrea Miller, when did you open Eponymy?<\/strong> In late September of 2008.<\/p>\n

What hatched the idea?<\/strong> I didn\u2019t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn\u2019t<\/em> want to do, and so I took a crapshoot and opened the store. My grandparents were in antiques so I developed an eye growing up. I can pick out things easily, and I started humble, so I thought it would be cool. . .this idea of being able to buy anything in a shop and have it be well curated and designed. My grandparents retired years ago, and all of our antique fixtures were in a horrible condition. I hauled them up from their old antique shop and I refinished and repainted all of them to give them a more modern feel. <\/p>\n

Do you know what your oldest antique is?<\/strong> Umm\u2026 yeah, but I don\u2019t want to say.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not from the Titanic is it?<\/strong> (laughing)<\/em> No, but it doesn\u2019t necessarily pop out at you so it\u2019s the kind of thing I wouldn\u2019t necessarily want anyone in the public to know. I know that sounds sketchy. I\u2019ll tell you off the record.<\/p>\n

Fair enough. Maybe I\u2019ll buy it. <\/em> What was the biggest challenge opening the store?<\/strong> Oh God. Wow, there were so many. I think the biggest challenge, and also the biggest thing I had going for me, was my naivet\u00e9. The fact that I never worked at a store before meant I didn\u2019t know what I was getting myself into, which was good in a way because if I had known more I\u2019d have thought, \u201cNo, that\u2019s nuts. That\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/em> So I\u2019m glad that I took the plunge and did it, but just the licensing, and the bureaus, and the dates, paperwork, all that crap was just unbearable. Permits. Anything that has to do with bureaucracy is just a nightmare.<\/p>\n

Has the turn in the economy had an effect on the business, or your plans for it?<\/strong> The tricky thing is in order to buy new stuff for the fall you have to buy it in the spring. So I had to buy this entire inventory before I even knew that I was going to get the shop. So you have to make a leap of faith.<\/p>\n

And be able to forecast.<\/strong> Exactly. I was already planning and buying stuff way before I opened shop and I think my store opened either the day before, or the day of, or the day after the stock market crashed. I was like, “Woo-Hoo! Yeah! Awesome timing.” I haven\u2019t really known anything other than this environment, although I wasn\u2019t necessarily predicting this environment a year ago. So it\u2019s hard to say because I don\u2019t know what it was like before. I imagine it ain\u2019t easy. On the other hand, I\u2019m learning way, way, way more than I would in a gentle environment. So hopefully when things start to get better it will make things that much more seamless. I guess. Hopefully?<\/p>\n

Do you use any local designers?<\/strong> I do. I\u2019m going heavy on that in the fall. I\u2019m using a local designer named Arati Rao, and her line is called \u201cA Line.\u201d She\u2019s right in this neighborhood; Rao has really amazing, elegant, creative stuff. I use a bunch of local jewelry designers. Most of the artists are local, and then I do, obviously, a mix of vintage and newer lines. A lot of them are Korean, and some are from California. I do Vivienne Westwood\u2014 the Anglomania line.<\/p>\n

Was her wedding dress in the Sex and The City<\/em> movie? <\/strong>Probably. I actually didn\u2019t see that movie. I should Netflix it.<\/p>\n

\"eponymy

New York <\/em>magazine named you one of their tastemakers. Do you think good taste translates? <\/strong>How do you mean?<\/p>\n

Like if you dress well, or maybe you appreciate fine art, are you less likely to, say, go see a Saw<\/em> movie?<\/strong> I’m sure it all comes hand in hand, but I bet there are some brilliant musicians out there who don\u2019t give a crap about what they\u2019re wearing. On the flip side, there can be someone who is extremely well-dressed and has a lot of cash to spend, and throw around, who doesn\u2019t really have a good sense of culture, or the arts, or music, or anything at all. I do think that having a sense of aestheticism is similar to having the raw talent of being a really good musician or having it in you to act or mimic. You can develop those crafts, but it\u2019s an inherent thing.<\/p>\n

Do you have any guilty pleasures? Something that a \u201ctastemaker\u201d might not be expected to like?<\/strong> Probably.<\/p>\n

We know it\u2019s not the Sex and The City<\/em> movie.<\/strong> You know, I got rid of my cable so it\u2019s hard to say now. I don\u2019t feel really guilty about things because if I do them I usually think they\u2019re funny, but for a while I was obsessed with the Discovery Health channel shows. They had one on face transplants; they had one on a girl who was born without a face\u2014all this crazy stuff. That was my TV thing, but I don\u2019t eat chocolate in the closet or anything like that.<\/p>\n

Eat chocolate in the closet? Is that an expression?<\/strong> I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

It is now. Is there a trend that women should be looking out for this summer? Anything that catches your eye?<\/strong> Our Melissa recycled plastic sustainable shoes have been doing really well. They are super-comfortable. They\u2019re pretty affordable for shoes, and they are recycled. So that\u2019s cool. And they smell good. They smell like My Little Pony. The joke is that they\u2019re actually recycled Pony, like all those Ponies in the 80\u2019s became these shoes. That might just be my joke.<\/p>\n

Is there a fashion trend you particularly hate?<\/strong> There is this look that\u2019s a lot of flair. It\u2019s people with stuff all over their bodies.<\/p>\n

Like Applebee\u2019s?<\/strong> Almost like Applebee\u2019s except it\u2019s the scarf, with the earring, with the hat. Bag, with the other bag on it, with the pins, and it\u2019s just, you know, too much. Lets take off half of those pieces of flair and then we\u2019ll talk from there. I don\u2019t think we really get a lot of that in this neighborhood. It\u2019s mostly Williamsburg, not that I\u2019m hating on Williamsburg. There\u2019s a lot of too-muchness going on. I think that if you take it way over the top and you\u2019re just totally too much then that\u2019s awesome, but if you\u2019re only \u201ckind of too much\u201d you\u2019ve got to streamline a little bit.<\/p>\n

Do you think the stores on this block all feed off one another, customer wise?<\/strong> I certainly hope so, and I think that this strip has been well developed. It\u2019s a certain type of development. It\u2019s more of a cultural development than a huge mass, like an Atlantic Yards development. So I do think that it\u2019s good, and every business that opens up in this area, on this block, we all help each other. The way I see it, the more good businesses the better it is for me. No matter how good a store is if it\u2019s in the middle of a desert no one\u2019s going to go. It makes this area more of a destination for people to come see interesting shops, eat interesting food, walk around, have fun. It\u2019s fun to do that in life.<\/p>\n

How to get there: <\/strong>Use the Hopstop link below for specific directions.<\/em> (Eponymy, 466 Bergen Street, between Flatbush and 5th, Brooklyn, 718.789.0301, shopeponymy.com)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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