Stereotyped Closet: 5 Minutes With The Purple Bedroom

A beautiful boutique filled with a variety of unique vintage finds from across the world. I have been shopping here for over a year now and I must say The Purple Bedroom is my favourite cure for vintage shopping, not just because of the clothes, but for the exceptional service. If you want to be styled in vintage, this is the place to go. Owner/Proprietor Tatiana Anikieff sits down with me for 5 mins to talk vintage.

SC: The Purple Bedroom - how did this name come about and where did it all begin?

TA: The Purple Bedroom is actually my childhood bedroom, painted purple, that became my mothers spare room. She loves to keep EVERYTHING and so it became a room, that in my teenage years, I used to find all of my grandmothers and mums old pieces. I would wear them and all of my friends would ask where I got them from and it became the running statement-is that from The Purple Bedroom!

SC: Do you have any favourite travel destinations for finding unique vintage pieces?

TA: I love going to small random towns in America that no one else would ever travel to on holiday.

SC: Vintage has always been affordable timeless fashion, but lately vintage prices continue to dramatically rise. How do you compete with this?

TA: In all honesty it is getting very difficult. I have noticed over the last 12 months that a lot of op shops will charge the same prices as I do which is difficult as they are receiving donations which I don’t....so it is becoming very difficult for me to keep my pricing structure as low as I can, which was my whole ethos when I opened the store. I felt that vintage pieces didn’t need to be as expensive as they were getting.

The other issue locally is pieces are drying up. People don’t either donate anymore, or when selling on Ebay or markets etc, they are at really inflated prices. When buying at these places, you are hard pressed to be able to touch/try on which with vintage is essential as sizing and shapes are very different now to what they were 30 or 40 years ago.

SC: Where do you get your inspiration from when it comes to your own ‘style?’

TA: It really depends on the day for me. Some days I am really girly and others I look like a boy. The main thing is dressing for your shape and ignoring current fashions if they don’t look good on you. Cut off denim shorts, example number 1!