GREATEST FRIEND
A visit to the Greatest Friend Trading Post on Waiheke Island offers so much more than a few racks of pre-loved clothes, as Lucy Slight discovers…
Pre-loved clothing on Waiheke
Angela Winter Means doesn’t call the pieces in her Waiheke Island store ‘vintage’ – “I’d be lying, because it’s not all vintage.” Her store isn’t an op-shop either, because it’s curated, cohesive. ‘Preexisting’ is her adjective of choice when asked how she describes her collection. “It’s a collection made up of contemporary-inspired, pre-existing garments,” she says. “70 percent of it is vintage but I would hope that it all looks ‘now’.”
When sourcing pre-loved pieces for resale at the Greatest Friend Trading Post, Angela prioritises contemporary shapes and natural fibres. Button-up silk shirts in the perfect shade of burnt-cream, denim skirts with buttons from navel to ankle and heavy, white Victorian dresses – “the ultimate power dressing” according to Angela – are just a few of the pieces that stand out. “But I’m not opposed to polyester if it’s got ‘something’ about it,” she says, with a nod to the bubblegum-pink, 70s, high-waisted, wide-leg pants that are hanging on the back wall. “It’s a collection that comes from the heart.”
The Greatest Friend Trading Post has found its home in a burgeoning enclave of artists’ studios and organic fare on Putiki Road in Ostend, halfway between Oneroa and Onetangi. It’s a small, but perfectly formed studio space with curated racks of clothing and accessories on one side and Angela’s workroom on the other. It’s here that she reinforces seams, tightens buttons, sews her own garments and gathers together pieces to sell instore and online when the timing is right. This creative hub has enabled Angela to join forces with other Waiheke locals who collaborate and support each other in their endeavours. She’s got plans to take part in the local market scene over the summer, and has started creating ceramics using Waiheke clay. She will soon be selling her own handmade glazed rectangle earrings in her store.
A flick through her Instagram page is not only inspiring for the beautiful clothing she sells direct, but for the powerful imagery of her friends and muses photographed wearing her pieces. The 40-year-old can certainly be considered a pioneer when it comes to the world of vintage and pre-existing clothing – she was, after all, one of the very first vintage sellers originally featured on the now-global platform, Etsy.com.
She’d been working in the United States tour managing metal bands for a decade when her first love – sewing – came calling and she decided it was time to slow down. She began researching the idea of creating her own line of clothing and quickly realised there was so much out there already that approaching the idea from the more sustainable angle of curating collections of existing pieces would be far kinder on the planet.
Her skills in sniffing out gems had been honed working at a vintage store in New York City, which housed historic pieces from the Civil War through to the 1930s. They catered to the upper echelons of the fashion world, with the likes of John Galliano and Phillip Lim stopping by to source from the store. For her own collection, Angela went back to her “Kiwi ways” and got into fashion that was a little bit more for the people on the ground, she says.
“I couldn’t help but attract these people who sniff you out if you’ve got something good, so I ended up going back to the city and opening up a showroom in Philadelphia. For $600 a month I had a massive loading bay with windows all down the side and beautiful light for my internet shooting – it was really fun.” At the same time she was working as a consultant for behemoth fashion brands Urban Outfitters, Free People and Anthropologie – who put the bread and butter on her table. They would send her their ‘muses’ for the season – a conceptualisation of their customers – and from there Angela would put a collection of vintage pieces together and they’d purchase what they wanted for their stores.
A question Angela often gets asked where she finds the things she resells. Her answer? “I find it from my heart.
And my fingers.” She’s discovered things that were in “really disgusting states,” she admits. She used to go through people’s basements at estate sales “when no one gave a shit and there was no one there” and would find 30s and 40s denim pant suits screwed up in a ball under the sink, along with Grandpa’s denim workwear and Nana’s Victorian blouses. She scours op-shops for contemporary pieces that fit with her aesthetic and back in the day would even rummage through piles of discarded clothing at rag houses in the States which is where surplus stock would go to die.
A few of the pieces that now hang in her Waiheke store are from her time in the States, brought with her when she relocated home with her family in 2017. And there’s a trip to Mexico on the cards, where she hopes to find pieces to flesh out her collection of muumuus and kaftans for summer.
Moving back to New Zealand has been an eye-opener for Angela, who is excited about the individuality of personal style here – the opposite to what she was seeing in the States. “I actually felt like I had to move home when I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m 10 deep in me. I’m only meeting me,’” she explains. “When you live somewhere with a huge population you tend to just see everyone dressing the same. [But] people are really individual here. We’re a melting pot; we coexist.”
One of her passions is personal styling – helping women to work out the best ‘uniform’ for them. And so a trip to Greatest Friend truly is so much more than a quick flick through a rack of second-hand clothes – it could even be a game-changer. “I love women; they’re my muses, forever. Every shape and size,” says Angela, “and they should feel better about themselves.
“Dressing is something that, for my generation at least, we’ve somehow had guilt associated with – you shouldn’t give it so much thought, or you shouldn’t dress [a certain] way at your place of work.”
Her belief, however, is that we should be staying true to who we are. “I actually prefer a ‘uniform’, rather than ‘I haven’t got that in my wardrobe, so I’ll get that.’ Then you’ve got too much. If you like a scuzzy black T-shirt, get 10 of them, because you look really good in them, you feel really good in them. I like that philosophy of shopping.”
For expert tips on vintage and second-hand shopping, visit FQ.co.nz/vintageshoppingtips