Feel-good thrift, enviable cool

Even though it’s been scientifically proven that comparing yourself to others makes you an unhappy person, there’s always going to be people who make you feel like you’ve accomplished very little. That’s what Jenni Nelson is to me.

She’s the owner of Community Thrift Vintage, a newly opened shop in the Downtown East Side in partnership with the Portland Hotel Society. She’s one of those people who has managed to live every single one of her dreams. But it’s hard to hate her for it.

Nelson is intimidating cool. A corn-fed beauty speckled with vibrant tattoos, the 30-year-old has always been unabashed with who she is, confident and compelling to watch from afar. Once a (seemingly bitter) music journalist from the Georgia Straight wrote Nelson into a review, referred to her as the “door bitch” at the Piccadilly Pub, where she worked in mid-2000.

Proudly hailing from Haney, a reputably unsavoury part of Maple Ridge, Nelson always wanted to a) be a fashion designer and b) run her own store. Despite the fashion industry being a notoriously ruthless business, Nelson has achieved both, with style.

While studying fashion at Kwantlen University College, she learned if she wanted to run her own shop one day, the best way to gain experience was to work for someone else. “That way you make mistakes on their dollar, instead of your own,” she says. “So I did.”

She started her career working retail at the soon-to-be-bulldozed-over True Value Vintage. Within a few months, she convinced owner Robert Haddad that the designer who worked on the store’s in-house line “sucked” and took over the position. Nelson co-designed the line Zachery’s Smile with the store’s other partner, New York-based Kristi Paris. Over webcam, they’d come up with unique, reworked pieces, which garnered fans like Tyra Banks and Scarlett Johansson and lucrative clients like Anthropolgie and Barney’s.

Nelson eventually moved to New York and stayed there for three years.

“I didn’t strive for it the way so many people do,” she says. “I certainly didn’t consider myself to be a designer. I’m much too practical.”

About a year ago, a friend who worked for the Portland Hotel Society was visiting New York and told Nelson about a social enterprise vintage shop he wanted to open in association with the organization.

“I totally jumped on it and begged him to let me in on it,” she says.

So, Nelson and her husband/bandmate Jeff Lee (they play together in Hard Drugs, a rock opera inspired by the DTES) moved back to town. They spent the last year writing a business plan, getting funding and finding a perfect space. It took about two months of nearly non-stop renovations, but they eventually built their shop, located at 41 West Cordova. (In the process, a friend warned her that drywall dust is also known as “divorce dust”, though Nelson shrugged it off. “We work well as a team,” she says of her husband.)

Nelson’s assistant managers both have extensive backgrounds in vintage clothing. The other employees are residents of the single room occupancy buildings run by the Portland and hired through a retail training program.

“I didn’t expect them to be so enthusiastic and friendly,” says Nelson of her new staff. “I got more than I expected. Just to be able to turn your life around is really amazing.”

Unlike other charity shops, which can be quite time-consuming to sift through, Community Thrift and Vintage does the picking for you. The pieces range from eye-catching to practical, meaning you’ll probably find at least one thing you really, really want. The most expensive piece is a $38 linen blazer.

“It’s not label-based, it’s more fabric-driven,” says Nelson. “We pick a lot of silk, linen and cotton.”

And so, Nelson is living her dream. From picking through rag piles to helping people shop, she is exactly where she wants to be. But don’t be bitter. Pop in and say hi, let her pick you out an outfit, and you'll feel the same way I do.

“I looooove it,” she says. “If I had my way I’d buy everything in the shop but it’s better this way. Now I can see other people look good in them.”