Retro Newcastle
Charlotte Rowland
Retro is a popular, quirky vintage shop selling one-off, unique pieces in a slinky interior close to Newcastle town centre. It’s renowned for its individualism, putting into the town an eclectic and varied shopping experience for fashion that it would otherwise be missing. What it does, and the reason for its superior popularity, is place value on idiosyncrasies, finding, in each stocked item, a story, which can be told to new audiences via dynamic, creative and unmatched ways.
The rails speak volumes. Eye-catching, loud, statement prints clash side-by-side, toned down by the occasional checkered blazer or simplified shirt. It’s hard to say what you can expect to find here because, as is the way with proper, reliable vintage shops, the stock changes regularly, but a lot of the garments chosen do tend to have something noticeably different about them. Jeans, for instance, might have patchwork logos ironed to their fronts, or a classic crew-neck could be far-from-classic for coming in the most vivid shade of green imaginable. The array of clothing on offer is impressive and, though small, the shop is filled with suchlike items. 108
The storefront is easy-to-spot, with purple-painted window-frames and orange grid-marks sprucing it up, and a funky name banner in bold black and white. The unusual, lively decor sums up what the shop, and its products, are really about, which, namely, is having fun with vintage, and clothing, and finding new ways to style the old in a way which makes a statement, and defines what the piece or pieces are about. What it brings to the customer is an experience, centred upon the essence of vintage, which is allowing what you find to unravel before you, and of entering into a realm which is enticing and intriguing as well as memorable and distinct.
