Spice up your live sustainably – listen to this week’s Girls With Goals when Denise Curtin met Gracie Collier.
“It’s like a lightbulb went off, I could definitely do that!”
From selling clothes at the Dublin Flea Market to spending her happiest days thrifting and playing with fabrics, it’s no surprise that Gracie Collier, the owner of Limerick’s Spice Vintage was set for success in the fashion industry.
Launching in Limerick in early 2018 after finishing a successful run as a pop-up store in Clonakilty, Cork – Spice Vintage has gone from strength to strength. Between its booming Instagram which boasts over 12,000 followers and its in store footfall, Gracie Collier can’t seem to keep clothes on the shelves – all of which are vintage finds over 20-years-old.
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“I just felt it, I was like I know this is going to be successful and I remember saying that to my parents when they were having dinner one of the nights before it was opening and they were like ‘you know you’re so funny the way you go on’ and I was like ‘no, you have to believe in yourself, you just have to’ because if you don’t believe in yourself, how are your customers meant to believe in it, you know?” Explained Gracie.
And it’s that positive thinking combined with incredible vintage finds and a sharp eye to spot a gap in the Limerick market that has made Spice such a roaring success to date.
And speaking of vintage finds, the 28-year-old entrepreneur is all about finding pieces that she knows others will love too. Travelling from London to Germany and all over Eastern Europe, Gracie revealed that she could spend over 8 hours in a warehouse picking pieces for her store. An exhausting job but one that she believes is worth it in order to have the store full of rare and beautiful finds.
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“I’m not curing cancer but what I am doing is providing something that’s makes people happy. And you can say it’s just clothes and at the end of the day that’s technically what it is but I think the way you project it into the world and how comfortable people feel when they come in to the shop and how the Instagram is projected, it is a positive environment.”
Sustainability is another thing Gracie is educating her customers on. From selling pre-loved garments to customising clothing for people who want to get a new lease of life out of their own clothes, she’s showing how you don’t need to buy fast fashion in order to look the part for any event.
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“They’re taking vintage silhouettes and regurgitating them in high-street shops, I see it every day. A big thing now is velvet mini dresses in 80s silhouettes with big puff sleeves, like you might have seen in Zara? And I’ve loads of them in the shop. Like YSL did them last year, like, you can get them. You can take high street and catwalk trends and come to a vintage shop and find them.”
Continuing, Gracie emphasised that by chatting about sustainability she’s not doing it to push her shop, she’s doing it to hopefully make people more aware of the conscious changes they too can do when it comes to fashion.
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“At the end of the day we’ve a responsibility to ourselves and to our kids and the world that we live in. And it’s just little changes that can make a massive difference. I think people don’t try because they think ‘well feck it like it’s already made and the damage is done’ but every item you buy, they’ve to make a new one to replace the one you’ve bought’, think about it like that.”
You can find Spice Vintage at Unit 1, Harvey’s Quay, Riverview, Limerick or online here.
Watch the interview below!
