How a Former Danish Model Turned Her Vintage Collecting Hobby Into a Business
Collect23
When Julie Blichfeld was 14-years-old, she found something special in her mom’s closet. It was a pleather belt with a giant buckle from the ’80s, and it was the accessory that Blichfeld’s mom wore the night she met and fell in love with her dad. Ever since that discovery, Blichfeld has been obsessed with sourcing and collecting vintage, which she did a lot of while living in Paris and working as a model after finishing high school.
“My agency only wanted me to wear black clothes, nude nail polish, and sky-high black stilettos,” Blichfeld says. “I felt quite depressed after a while because this was the opposite of my personal style. The only time I felt happy and excited to be there was when I visited small vintage stores around the city and got my hands on colorful, playful clothes.” After modeling, Blichfeld worked as a writer and fashion editor for the Danish publishing company Aller Media, but once she became pregnant with her son Valdemar, who is now one-and-a-half, she knew that she had to switch directions and follow her true passion. Earlier this year Blichfeld launched the online vintage business Collect23.
The Collect23 offering is a mix of designer and lesser-known labels, sourced mainly throughout Blichfeld’s travels around Europe, especially France and England. Everything is vibrant and bold, just the sort of things that Blichfeld felt she was missing when going to and from casting calls in Paris. Treasures currently listed on the site include a polka-dot Yves Saint Laurent jacket and a logo’d Christian Lacroix denim dress. While there’s a lot of competition right now in Copenhagen in terms of great vintage brick-and-mortar shops, what sets Collect23 apart is that Blichfeld’s approach is driven by easy-to-navigate ecommerce.
“At the moment, 60 percent of my sales are done on the web shop and Instagram, while the other 40 percent comes from people visiting the showroom, which is open on Wednesdays by appointment only,” she says. “Before I launched, I was craving a place to shop for vintage online in the same way you shop on a Net-a-Porter or a MyTheresa, where the clothes are styled well in an editorial way on models and with proper sizing guides.”
The Collect23 website does indeed provide detailed measurements of the clothes, and the prices are right too: Nothing is over $700. “I wanted to add vintage pieces to the market that a range of people could relate to,” Blichfeld notes. “I wanted everything to be listed at an affordable price point with great look book images, and I wanted to encourage people to shop vintage and secondhand online in an effort to raise their awareness about the sustainability aspect.” She adds, “I truly believe in Collect23 and in this new way of consuming. It’s my dream, and it gives me a freedom that I wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
