By Sonia Schnee | Posted Saturday, December 18, 2021
For those who don’t know Nancy Cook — you should. Whether she’s rocking out with her band Megasparkle, putting together art shows and events, making dresses by hand, or uncovering fabulous vintage items, one thing is for certain: Nancy is always on the go. Her vintage clothing and accessory business, Crash Doll Vintage, is the place to go if you’re looking for that rare, stylish vintage piece to add to your growing wardrobe. (If you’re in NYC, check out the Crash Doll Vintage pop-up at 340 E 64th Street, now through January 16, 2022.) Learn all about Nancy’s fashionable beginnings, what it was like to start a business during COVID, and how to shop Crash Doll Vintage online, in our interview below.
What inspired you to start Crash Doll Vintage?
I started Crash Doll Vintage one week after COVID started, in March of 2020. What spurred me into starting a business was the fact that I couldn’t keep any of my jobs in small business or do event planning, and I've always loved vintage clothing.
I've been collecting vintage clothing since I was 15-years-old. I used to ask my mom to drive me to stores that I liked, and I used to be like, "There's this really great store in Montclair, I need to go check out the vintage clothes." I was also really fascinated with flea markets and estate sales, stuff like that when I was a kid, all the little treasures that you could find that all had a previous story. I think the first little antique things that I got were from my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Earl. When I was four-years-old, she invited me into her attic and she gave me a little tiny rubber ball and a little spider, and I was like, "Oh!" I kept that little rubber ball and spider forever. Recently, I learned that she did this numerous times and in fact gave me her diary. I wish I still had it.
I had decided to start the business one week into COVID because I wasn't going to be working at Maplewood Mercantile. I couldn't work there (due to the pandemic). I had gotten a job as an event assistant in floral design helping out at weddings, but I never actually got to do that because all the weddings got canceled. I put on music shows and I couldn't do that and all these pop-ups and event planning. I was like, "OK, what the heck am I going to do? I can't just sit around and do nothing." So I started Crash Doll Vintage seven days after the pandemic hit!
Where does the name “Crash Doll Vintage” come from?
The name "Crash Doll" was actually something I considered for our band name, Megasparkle, but Thea (Kearney) really didn’t like Crash Doll, and so we didn't use it. We had a really hard time picking a band name. It's actually kind of humorous how much of a hard time we had picking a name that we all could agree on. So yeah, that's how it started.
I used to have these pajamas that had "Babydoll" embroidered by the heart, and I always liked the word "babydoll" and I love babydoll dresses and fashion, so "Doll" kind of came from that. I also had a baby doll when I was little, called Baby Tender Love. I just liked the word "doll.” I think of dolls as something you dress up and I liked the idea of, "I pick out these clothes to dress people up." And "crash", I don't know. "Crash" is just like... I liked the way it sounded together, and I guess it kind of made sense when the whole world sort of came to a halt in the beginning of COVID, so it was like "Crash Doll." It just came together like that.
In the beginning, I used a room divider and then I changed my mind shortly into it and decided to go with the Sonic Youth poster. I just love that album and I love the art behind it.
I like themes. Like, I have these black shorts and I wear the black shorts all the time with a top. Oftentimes, I'll wear the black shorts, which are part of Crash Doll's look. I just think it's really funny and cheeky. I do it seriously, but I also find it a little bit of a comedy/actress sort of thing. It's like I adopt a personality. I put on the sunglasses, which are made by this company called Crap Eyewear, and I'm just like, "OK. I'm Crash Doll now." My mom jokes that when I get famous, the sunglasses are going to be worth like a million dollars.
I like it! Great branding. Everything comes together. The logo.
My logo was designed by Kelly Weiner in Montclair who works at Parcel, and she got it so spot on. I was like, "Holy shit! That's so good!" At first, I was like, "Oh, I'm not smiling" and then… No, I like that I'm not smiling. I look like a tough chick."
Right. It goes with the persona. It's got its own cool thing. It's definitely a recognizable vibe.
Yeah, and it fits in with the Pettibon, the artist who did the Sonic Youth poster was Raymond Pettibon, and so she made me into one of those characters. So it goes with the whole theme.
So I was doing that out of the house, and then in the spring I started doing markets in town, and then I went and did the Springfield Avenue Market in Maplewood. I did the Baker Street Market. I went out to Brooklyn and did the Greenpoint Terminal Market. I got an opportunity at this organization called ChaSaMa. I applied for this space, and I got a pop-up with my art and Crash Doll on 14th Street on December 8th through January 6th, and then they called me up and asked me if I was interested in popping up in Bryant Park, so I did that and I got "The Dolls."
How did you find your models?
The two girls that model for me, one is named Sophie. I met her at my market on Springfield Avenue. She came running up to me and she was like, "Oh, my God, I want to see if this dress is still here. It's still here! I'm so happy!" and we just started talking and I was like, "What are you doing later?" We became really good friends. She was an au pair in Maplewood for a year, and I was like the first person she met. She's from Manchester. She's the one with the long red hair.
The other girl, Charlotte, her and her mom have always shopped in all the small businesses I've worked out of, and I've always liked them. They're really cool. I asked her to model and she was like, "Yeah, I'll do it." I'm like, "Cool!" So, yeah, they're my dolls. They like being called "The Dolls." It's funny.
How far in advance do you look for a market or an event?
I try to get a month or two months ahead. I'm looking into some different places in the city. I think now that things seem to be improving as far as people going out, we feel comfortable going out and shopping. I think they'll be even better attended, and definitely the ones outside. I think that people are getting more comfortable going indoors, so it's good.
I think some people were nervous about coming into my kiosk, so I would say, "Oh, you know, I can step outside and you can go in by yourself if you feel more comfortable" and some people were like, "Oh, yeah, OK." It was kind of a smaller space, whereas 14th St was a 3,000 square feet.
How easy or hard is it to find vintage items? Do you sell clothing only, or jewelry and other things as well?
Clothing, jewelry, shoes, purses. The focus right now is the 1920s through the '90s. I probably have most of my pieces from the '60s to the '90s. There's a few things that will pop up from the '40s and '50s and the '20s and ‘30s.
I source it from all different places. I also have a few people who I consign with. There's a woman I met, Eileen. She came into my pop-up and she has a huge studio full of vintage, and she just lets me go in there and select whatever I want and if someone purchases it, then we split it. She's been a real asset to my business and she is just really wonderful.
I feel like I've had a lot of luck, and I feel really blessed with the opportunities that have come my way and the people who I've met along the way. It's been a lot of fun.
I think, "What if I didn't decide to do this, what would it have been like for me?" I think I really would have gotten down. I need to be active and out there and engaging with people and have projects. I tend to kind of be a multitasker. I guess I like to have my hands on a lot of creative things. It makes me happy. This has been a really great focus for me.
You have multiple interests (art, music, clothing). Do you find there's any overlap or interaction? Does one area inspire another?
I sew and knit. So if I get a vintage piece that needs mending, I can mend it, so I can use my sewing skills that way. Sometimes when I do the markets, I'll bring my handmade items because I have handmade clothes and knitwear. I do that, too.
I'm doing a capsule collection for this company called Hearth in Australia, knitting sweaters and hats and scarves for her. Where do I find all the time to do that? I don't know. On the train. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, it'll be like four in the morning, I'm like, "I'll do a few stitches now."
I had another small business called Wool and Violets that was handmade kids clothes and women's and children's knitwear.
When people walk into your store or pop-up, what kind of reactions do they have?
Usually, people are very excited and they're like, "Oh my God! I really like the stuff that you've curated!” People have told me that it's very "me" and that I have my own kind of approach to it.
At one point I was just like, "Oh, you know, there's so many people doing vintage clothes. I don't know how I'm going to compete with all them" and someone said “You don't have to compete with anybody. You bring your own style to it and your style is different than everyone else's." So that's absolutely 100 percent true. It's my brand and carefully curated. I would wear most of the pieces in my collection.
I've gotten some really, really glowing reviews. Like this one girl in NY told me, "You're the coolest girl I've ever met." I was like, "What?!" Haha.
I had another girl that bought a dress from me that she's going to wear for her wedding. So that was a big compliment, that she found to dress in my collection that she wanted to wear to get married. I was like, "Oh, my God, this is so exciting." She was telling me that and she doesn't really care that about the guy seeing the dress, this whole myth, like, "Oh, he shouldn't see the dress. That is bad luck." She brought the dress home and she had my business card, and her fiancé went and looked at the dress and texted me and he was like, "Hey, I couldn't help it. I peeked. I found the dress. I absolutely love it." I was like, "Oh, my God. You guys made my day! You have to send me a photo when you get married in May" and he's like, "I absolutely will." That was like a huge compliment.
Then there's people that keep coming back, the repeat customers, that just keep supporting me, the people that are every day showing up for me on Instagram. They're always liking my posts and being my cheerleaders and supporters. Some I know, some I don't know. Some are really good friends of mine, some acquaintances, some are strangers. So, I mean, it's really nice to see that and have that kind of support.
You mentioned that you've been wearing vintage clothes since you were fifteen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to go into these shops. Two of them were on Bloomfield Avenue and then there were a couple on a side street near the record shop. I forget the name of the street, but they were mostly in Montclair. Then in my college years, I started driving out to the Newark Salvation Army. I would go to Red, White and Blue in Paterson. I started going to flea markets more around that time. I've been thrifting and vintage shopping for years and I always loved clothes.
In fact, when I lived in my parents' house, I had two really huge closets, but then that wasn't enough. It's really a problem! So then I had my friend Arnold, who has passed away, but he built me a clothing rack because I needed more space for clothes.
Now, it's pretty much the same. My upstairs closets are filled to the brim and the attic, my bedroom closets are filled to the brim. I have an armoire and then I have four racks of vintage clothes. Two of them are at the store and two of them are in my hallway here. But, you know, everybody seems to roll with me, so no one's kicked me out of the house quite yet. Ha!
When I was in kindergarten in Bloomfield, I was adamant about what I would wear, and I would have little dresses and skirts on all the time, miniskirts and minidresses, and my tights would be falling down and I'd be pulling them, pulling and tugging at my tights and fixing my skirts and dresses and telling my mom that she had to walk, like, six feet behind me. She wasn't allowed to go with me. I had to do everything myself. It was going to be my way.
My mom likes to tell this story. On my first birthday, she had three different dresses that she put me on throughout the day, and one I ripped, crawling, and one I got chocolate cake on, but she said she was really happy that happened because then she got to change my outfit and I got to wear three pretty dresses. She's not into fashion, my mom, but she liked dressing me when I was little. But then she didn't have any say by the time I was, like, three probably.
How do you prepare for different pop-ups and markets? Do you pick the best 100 vintage pieces and then leave the rest at home?
I kind of curate for the individual pop-up. For Mada, it was the spring-summer capsule collection, so it was just pieces that would work for spring and summer, and there were bathing suits and cover-ups and a couple of vintage t-shirts.
Most of my pieces I think are on the dressier side because that's who I am. I don't do vintage jeans. I have like maybe two pairs of pants. I don't really do pants because I don't really wear pants myself that much. So the clothes that I pick and carry are representative of the style I am, for the most part. It's like skirts, dresses, tops, vintage bathing suits, jewelry, purses, the Crash Doll Vintage logo tees.
Another thing I like and this is sort of catching, I think more people are doing it, I like wearing slips out not under. You can take a vintage slip dress and wear it with a t-shirt or put a cardigan over it. I did that when I was in college. I used to wear a vintage slip with a blazer. So I haven't changed since I was 20, so. Haha.
Hey, it's sharp. It's fashion. It works.
It works! I mean, Marc Jacobs makes slip dresses, and the '90s were all about slip dresses. Courtney Love wore slip dresses. I think most people my age are kind of, like, stuck in that time period, in the '90s.
It was a good time period.
Yeah, and I love the '60s. I LOVE the ‘60s. Not like the hippie-dippy. I'm too much of a punk to accept the hippie. I can't. I like punk music and hardcore music and indie and new wave and all of that stuff, but no Grateful Dead. None of that. No, no. Ha!
It's a different type of vintage.
Yeah, you're not going to find anything like that [at Crash Doll]. But I love Godard, you know, the French [filmmaker]. That style, like mid-'60s and Twiggy minidress and that kind of stuff. That's me. I love miniskirts and minidresses. That's never going to change. I think I'll like them when I'm 80. I don't know if I'll still be wearing them when I'm 80, but if I look good, I might be.
Go for it! Why not?
Everybody can laugh at me. Haha. You know, there's people who say, “You can't dress a certain way at a certain age.” I don't believe that. I think if you feel good and you look good in it, then you should wear it, absolutely.
Very true. Words to live by, for sure.
It's important. It's important to me because I feel more comfortable dressed up. Like today, I was actually in my gym clothes for a long time, but I really hate being in gym clothes. I don't really like going out and doing things in gym clothes. That bothers me. Even when my kids were little, I was dropping them off at preschool and I would have my gym clothes underneath a nice outfit, and then I would like take it off when I got to the gym, [and then] put it back on. I just don't like it. I just don't feel comfortable, you know? But I won't wear a dress to the gym.
There used to be this guy at the gym that would wear his button-down shirt and fancy pants, and he'd exercise like that before he went to work and I was like, "Wow, my gosh." I was kind of like, "What a weirdo. I can't relate," but now that I think about it and what I'm saying to you right now, he really wasn't comfortable in that! Maybe he's not a weirdo after all! We should accept that guy.
I hope it was like a light run and not like a 5-mile jog.
He was just on the exercise bike, which was funny.
He was pretending, "If I were in the city, I'd be biking to..."
People are characters.
That is true. But hey, characters make the world interesting.
The more wacky a person... Like, I tend to gravitate towards other artsy types, and I have friends that aren't all my age, which I also think is really important, to keep life exciting. Like, if I only hung out with people my own age, I think I would go crazy.
When I was younger, I was in a poetry group and it was five of us and there were two 22-year-olds, two women in their 40s, and one 80-year-old, and out of everybody, the 80-year-old was the coolest. She was the best. She was cooler than any of us. For real.
With Crash Doll, I've sold to young kids and up to women in their 70s. One of my repeat customers, I don't actually know her age, but I am going to guess that she's in her 70s, early-70s, late-60s.
I have had models shop and buy my things in the city.
And then little kids will come up and buy a silk neck scarf and I think, "This is probably the first vintage piece they bought" and I just think, "Am I starting a whole new thing for them?" That's exciting, too.
In terms of you getting interested in vintage when you were a kid, was it something like, "Oh, the store was there, so I went in and explored just because it was there?" or was it something about the pieces being different or feeling different, a curiosity?
I probably saw the store, was just really curious about it, and cinema may have had some part in it, just being drawn to movie actresses and looks. Probably fashion magazines, too, because I was always buying fashion magazines as a teenager. Music, too. Music and fashion kind of go together.
Finding unique pieces. It's like, you didn't just get this at the store and somebody else could be showing up for the same thing. It's something different that nobody else can get, unless they can, because sometimes you'll find the same vintage thing and sometimes you'll find it three times, which is really bizarre.
Do people ever reach out to you on social media and say, "Hey, I have something" or "I found something in the attic or through a relative"?
Yeah. People will connect with me about things that they have, that they want to see if I want to buy.
People do ask all the time, and it's cool. It's fun. I like hearing people's stories, and people are always telling me their stories, like, "Oh my God, I had a purse just like that and I lost it and it was just so sad. I'm so glad you have one because now I can have it again!"
Are there any particular items that you have your eye on, that you like to bring in for the spring and summer?
I think I might bring in some sunglasses and some other kinds of accessories. I definitely do want to try and get my hands on some vintage sunglasses because they work really well for me, and I was thinking about trying to do a few more casual kinds of pieces because most of my stuff is really dressy. I noticed lately that skirts are selling really well. So I want to try and find some cute vintage skirts and tops and gauzy cotton dresses. I might try to do some jean shorts, too.
I think maybe it would be kind of cool if I designed something. I have t-shirts, but I was thinking maybe of taking the logo and doing something else with it, but I'm not quite sure yet.
Do you do personal styling?
I did my first vintage styling. That was a lot of fun. I turned this actress into a singer-songwriter that's really obscure from the 1950s. Her name is Connie Converse. My friend is a photographer and asked me to style her. So I did the wardrobe and props styling and it was really fun. I had to pick out all the outfits and everything fit her perfectly. It was amazing. She was just like, “I can't believe it. This fits me perfectly!” I'm like, “Yep. I know what I'm doing!”
I really enjoy it and I thought it was a lot of fun. I like the challenge of finding the pieces that would work to create this character. I had pretty much all the props. It was like the night before. “Do you have a suitcase from the 1960s?” I'm like, “Yeah.” “Do you have a telephone that would have been used in the ‘60s and ‘70s?” I'm like, “Yeah, yeah.”
We started in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and we went all the way up to Nyack to this guy who had all these Volkswagen Bugs, and we borrowed one of the Bugs for the last part of the shoot because she disappeared in 1974 and drove away in her Volkswagen Bug and nobody ever heard from her again. So that was the last thing we shot.
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about you?
I have some selected items on Etsy under “Crash Doll Vintage” and on Facebook and Instagram.
If people have any questions for me, reach out. Even if it’s just about things like repairing vintage, because I do that, too. That’s part of the job, cleaning it or repairing it. I don't necessarily offer it [as part of my business], but I mean, as I collect pieces, sometimes they'll be missing a button, and sometimes I think that something will look better if it's hemmed or just tweaked a little bit. Mostly a lot of the alterations I've been doing are on my own pieces.
I’m also open to people if they have something in their mind that they can't find. Like, I have a little list going on. Michelle from Bone Pool Radio, she was like, “Oh, if you ever come across a red kimono with a dragon on the back, let me know.” I like knowing what people are looking out for.