November is especially busy for Maude Vintage on Broadway. Owner Sabrina Braden has spent five days in the basement collecting all the vintage clothes that people rented for Halloween. After laundering and mending, all the clothes will be ready for renting again. Braden likes to keep everything organized and it is part of her driven personality.
“With the shop this large and having two aspects of business,” Braden said. “If you don’t at least keep the majority portion of that (the business) rolling, it will cause a chaos.”
Gabrielle Parish, a co-worker, and friend of Braden, said she is very serious about her job.
“I’ve known her for seven years,” Parish said. “She is always focused on her work and won’t even rest when she is devoted.”
Braden discovered her love for vintage clothes when she was in college. She worked at a thrift shop to support her school and she noticed that the shop bailed vintages for rags.
“It upset me because I felt like vintage clothes in a lot of ways are of good quality,” Braden said.
Opening at 2000, Maude Vintage has existed for 17 years and it’s all about Braden’s love and passion for her job.
“It was a gut and instinct at the beginning,” Braden said. “My family thought I was taking a woman’s failing business. But I have this feeling that I really want to finish what I started, and as it turns out I was really good at it.”
Parish said that the shop is successful because of Braden’s single-minded determination.
“She is always fair and honest in her job,” she said. “If she can do the work by herself, she definitely won’t let others help.”
Braden said she appreciates doing vintage clothing for several reasons, from recycling being a humanitarian, and to be unique. She also expressed her dissatisfaction with fast fashion.
“I think it’s very wasteful,” she said. “I wonder how much clothes are getting sold; I wonder the ethics of the factories and how these clothes are being made. There’s crime against humanity that happening for us to get fast fashion, fashion that degrades after one or two times in your washer.”
While opening a vintage shop that sells old-fashioned clothes, Braden also keeps pace with the modern fashion.
“It’s actually very easy because new fashion is almost always based on old fashion,” Braden said. “The vintage forms of the modern counterparts are the originals.”