Flea markets and secondhand shops in the U.S. and Europe are established attractions, boasting a plethora of vintage accessories and clothes. For retro fashionistas in Kyiv, it’s a different story; the Ukrainian market doesn’t have such variety.
So when 39-year-old vintage fan Anna Yehorova from Kyiv found out that a friend had moved to the United States, she asked him to look for vintage accessories and send them to her.
He fell in love with the process. They decided that Yehorova would sell his findings in Ukraine.
Yehorova started her company, Vintage Guild of Rosa and Sara, in 2016. Now they sell about 200 accessories per month, priced from Hr 50 per item to Hr 2,500. They specialize in 20th century pieces, produced in the decades between 1920 and 2000.
The shop has a slew of famous brands, like Emmons, JJ, Monet, Sarah Coventry, but it also carries pieces by smaller names. Yehorova says she has always disapproved of the reverence towards vintage jewelry, especially more playful bijouterie.
“I wanted to serve it differently. I wanted to do it positively, to have and share fun.”
For Yehorova, however, vintage is more than just jewelry — it’s a way of life. She often dresses up in old-fashioned hats, gloves, pins and clothes. With her husband, she attends lindy hop dancing classes, as well as lectures on fashion, retro themed parties and fairs.
Rosa, Sarah, their toys
Yehorova’s accessories are from abroad, but the flavor she chose for her business is pure Ukraine, or rather, pure Odesa. She named her brand Vintage Guild of Rosa and Sarah to suggest the Jewish culture of Ukraine’s southern port city.
“I am not from Odesa, and I don’t have Jewish origin, it’s just that this topic is as deep as the Black Sea. This culture has so many humour in it that we want to share it and to introduce it to people,” Yehorova says.
“Our readers and customers love this atmosphere, they happily join this game and become neighbours of our Odesa yard.”
Rosa and Sarah are Jewish names common to Odesa, she says, where in the 19th and early 20th centuries Jewish people made up some 30 percent of the population. Yehorova peppers her speech with Odesa-Jewish vernacular, calling the accessories that she sells tsatsas, which means toys.
Selling her accessories, Yehorova comes up with anecdotes about their past. Promoting a pin from the 1980s that depicts a girl taking a kitten from a carton box, she talks about a girl called Beyla, the granddaughter of a trader called Tsylia at Odesa’s Pryvoz market, who begged for “a fluffy beastie,” until she received one as a gift.
“We sell accessories produced by the respected brands, but we sell it with humour,” says Yehorova. “Many people start following us just to read our tales, and only afterwards decide to buy something.”
Vintage Guild of Rosa and Sarah has over 9,000 followers on Facebook. Anastasiia Grigoruk, 24, is one of them.
Grigoriuk, a fan of the vintage style, got her first Rosa and Sarah’s accessory as a present from her husband in 2016, who bought it at the Retro Cruise fair in Kyiv. Since then, she has bought over 10 vintage items from Yehorova’s Guild.
Grigoriuk says that apart from being beautiful, vintage accessories are rare and have history.
“I love to retell those stories to my friends, and I don’t care that they are invented,” she says. “They are still interesting. We, people who love the vintage world, dressing up in old-fashioned manner, we also in a way invent the stories for ourselves.”
Yehorova, a former journalist, says that she now spends all her time on her vintage business, writing posts, communicating with the clients and preparing for the fairs.
“It brings enough money not to have to go back to the office,” she says. “I don’t have a goal to turn it into a big corporation. Vintage can’t become a part of a mass market. I just love what I do.”
To check out vintage accessories go to www.facebook.com/vintageartel/. The content is in Russian, but Yehorova will respond to a message in English, and explain something on request.
Vintage Guild of Rosa and Sarah will also take part in a vintage fair during the Retro Cruise festival in Kyiv on May 12 at 97 Saksahanskogo St. at 12–11 p. m.
