Inspired by the classics
Young fashion lovers drawn to styles of ’50s housewives, ballerinas.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Like most in the fashion industry, Emily Hardesty and Lauren Roark acquired their fashion degrees and settled into the corporate world.
There, surrounded by the latest designs, the two met and bonded over their love of vintage clothing.
Hardesty, 25, and Roark, 23, were more interested in the hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind look of “your grandma’s clothes.”
Roark, a Mountain View native, studied fashion at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, while Hardesty found her way to Arkansas after studying at Auburn University in Alabama.
Though they are centrally located in Arkansas, they spend their free time scouring estate sales and small towns all over the state, their hometowns and even while on vacation for clothing made during or before the ’70s.
After quitting their jobs in the corporate fashion world, Roark became a shop girl and Hardesty became a receptionist. Their shopping habit became more of a hobby.
Because neither could pass up an opportunity to buy an interesting dress — even if it was the wrong size — their closets soon overflowed with more clothes than they could ever wear.
They needed somewhere else to store their collections.
“We realized how much fun we had doing it, so we got a little more serious about it,” Hardesty said. The two opened their Magpie and Birdie booth in the Mid Towne Antique Mall about a year ago to officially create a business out of their hobby.
The name came from knowing a little bit about the habits of birds.
“Magpie is the bird that finds the treasure among the trash and takes it back to its nest,” Roark said.
The bird is the girl for whom the magpie collects the treasure.
“She sews the clothes and fixes them,” Roark said.
So, like their feathered counterparts, the two dig through the old clothes trunks of the world to find the treasures among them.
Both Roark and Hardesty loved to play dress-up as children and say that sparked their love for old clothes.
“My mom always took me antiquing, and I developed an appreciation for vintage hats,” Roark said. “I began collecting vintage hats and purses, and then eventually dresses, and now here we are.”
Hardesty said that she adored a 1950s pink tulle flower girl dress her mom wore when she was 4 or 5 years old. “It went all the way to the floor, and I just thought it was so magical.”
But her love for vintage clothes stems from a desire to travel back in time.
“I’ve always wanted to be able to jump into a time machine, and it probably had alot to do with what I'd be wearing on the other side,” Hardesty said.
“I think that times used to be so much more romantic, and since I can't actually go back in time, wearing the clothes is the next best thing.”
Part of the fun of collecting vintage items is making them relevant with modern styling, Roark said.
So she and Hardesty use their sewing and knitting skills to update the clothes and then add them to the racks in their booth.
They’re often surprised by which items sell.
“Some things are kind of funny,” Hardesty said, pulling out a blue and white flowered jumpsuit. “This thing we couldn’t pass up, but it’s been sitting here about a year.”
Roark can’t understand why it hasn’t sold yet.
“I wore it to a Hawaiian party, and I got a lot of compliments on it,” she said. “There are some things, like the jumpsuit that have been here awhile because they’re waiting for that brave soul.”
When they comb through sales around the state, they see other shoppers looking for good deals on name brand clothes, but Roark and Hardesty want to dig further into the racks.
“We’re like, ‘Where’s the old, embarrassing, interesting stuff?’” Roark said.
“Where’s your grandma’s clothes?” Hardesty added.
On one of their first estate sale trips, they assumed the sale meant the owner of the house was dead, Roark said.
“So we were saying, ‘I hope this lady’s in heaven looking down’ and people were like, ‘That’s her over there,’” she said.
The two ended up feeling an affinity for the owner of the estate — they saw in her the same obsession for collecting clothes.
“This woman had an entire second floor of a very large house filled with clothes,” Hardesty said.
She reassured the woman that they’d take good care of her clothes.
“We were like, ‘This isn’t real,’” she said. “I was having dreams about it for weeks afterward … and they were all our size, too. It was ridiculous.”
Hardesty and Roark can see themselves as one day having a floor full of clothes — the more dramatic, the better.
“We’re kind of looking forward to the day when we’re like 80 and sitting around in ball gowns, smoking cigarettes and crazy, wrinkled old ladies,” Hardesty said.
The two admit to a theatrical streak and don’t really want to wait until they’re retired to start wearing ball gowns.
“We wish everyone would wear ball gowns every day,” Hardesty said.
“And big turbans and feathered hats and stuff,” Roark added.
But until ball gowns and turbans become the norm, the two have their signature styles for day-to-day wear. Hardesty prefers 1950s housewife clothes, while Roark prefers an obscure French movie look or “anything that looks like a ballerina.”
For inspiration, they turn to movies like Junebug, a documentary on Edie and Edith Beale called Grey Gardens, and Robert Altman’s Nashville.
They’d eventually like to expand their ventures into more artistic realms with artwork on the walls and more community-driven projects.
“The more we put into the community and the more effort we put into the business, the more we get out of it,” Roark said.
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