Recently I have been working in Mooch Vintage, Sheffield helping the fabulous team with some merchandising. Mooch is easily my favourite vintage shop this is an amazing experience for me and I’m very grateful to Wayne, the owner for letting me help out. This vintage shop has certainly raised the bar for other vintage shops in Sheffield. The shop is chocker full of vintage clothes, true to every era and there is definitely something for everyone in store! The shop has the best atmosphere, from fun friendly staff, great vintage knowledge and great songs to belt out! In my first visit I was given the opportunity to work on window dressing. This was a difficult task, simply because its hard to choose what to put out, if I could I would put everything out!

Firstly, I wanted to create something showing of the wide range of what is in store so I went for the fabulous 60’s winter clothes. The classic blocked colours and the boyish shaped belted dress. This could have stood alone, its that fab but I wanted to create a full winter outfit, to show off Mooch’s stock and to give an example to the passers by how this kind of style can be worn. I went for the classic silken neck tie tucked into the collar, an adorable fur hat and a matching yellow coat, resting over the shoulders to keep my block colour theme going. Wayne loved it and said it had a, ‘With Love From Russia’ feel to it. Which was great, image achieved. I loved this look, and I am very happy that its sat in the window of Mooch!

I know this kind of style isn’t for everyone, so to reflect Mooch’s diversity, I next designed a little more contemporary outfit, heading for the 90’s.

The key feature for this outfit was the fantastic leather tasselled jacket! Mooch has many amazing leathers in store, but there wasn’t any currently in the window, so I had to change that! To the jacket I added some more every day wearable items such as the Levi 501 jeans and a rather simple turtle neck. I accessorised fairly heavily because you can with an outfit like this, and I also wanted to show case more of Mooch’s diverse stock. The leather belt and rucksack went perfectly with the jacket and the head scarf finished it off nicely, creating a full, but not over crowded look. By displaying this, I have allowed passers by to pick off elements of it that they like. Even if someone doesn’t like the whole outfit, there may be something on it they see that suits then!

I think the use of two very different styles of outfit in a window is important, some people may be put off by the word ‘vintage shop’, expecting find only garish floor length dresses in store. Dressing windows in this way allows for peoples opinions to change and it targets more people.