HYDE PARK – We all have our own way of expressing ourselves by either dying our hair, getting tattoos or doing both and Tina Oakden is expressing by doing just that. Finally, she can express more of who she is through her very first vintage store.
She opened her first store in September, called The Vixens Vintage, and is located in Hyde Park. She created the space to reflect who she is as a person.
When first entering the store, it is filled with different colors and shapes with clothes and jewelry on display, ready to be cherished by another person. In her store, she encourages anyone and everyone to try on jewelry or clothing because you may never know what you are going to find or love until you try it on.
“I guess, just stop in and I just want people to have fun,” Oakden explains. “Like, learn how to have fun again. If you have a good time, playing weird, crazy crap, like, I want to project that.”
Tina says that if anyone would like to donate clothing to her store, she is more than welcome to accept the clothes and find them new homes.
Tina is not done, she has bigger and better dreams for her store and trying to get more people to come to her store. Her next dream is to get a hearse and decorate it on the outside with her logo and the inside full of color and filled with clothes and jewelry. Her perfect dream of buying a hearse is having it be the color green but will settle for it being black.
“If I can find one in black, that would be great,” she exclaims. “And then I’ll just put my logo on the side, and then just kind of do some, like, little kitschy things on the outside.”
Tina finds her treasures at other stores, flea markets, vintage markets. She will display most things she finds but if there is an item that she personally loves, she will keep that for herself.
“My prize possession…I don’t think it’s here. No, it’s not for sale. I just have some jewelry at home that I’ve picked up.”
Tina’s dream is for customers to come in feeling welcomed and comfortable. She hopes for anyone who walks in that they can find an item that expresses who they are as a person and be able to walk away and cherish that item.
She first started going to flea markets and yard sales in Illinois with her mother and sisters. They would spend their weekends finding different treasures or finding what they needed at the moment.
Oakden continued to explore different vintage markets and was able to find unique treasures that she now cherishes. She soon realized that people are willing to buy the treasures she finds and took the chance to sell her items through Etsy and eBay.
“I just kind of started building from that,” Tina says. “So doing markets and Vintage Market Days and, you know, Etsy, eBay, selling online, locally.”
She immersed herself in selling vintage items during COVID to at first support her family and build more of her dream of opening a store.
“I would come home with these, like, massive pieces…and I just started posting things online, and people were buying it. And I was like, wait a minute.”
After years of selling items on Etsy and eBay, she has acquired a new skill she learned along the way. She can now distinguish a piece of jewelry or clothing and know what year it was made.
“I have, like, ’60s and ’70s, mainly because they’re so easy for me to spot, which is just like, practice, practice, practice. Like, look at it and be like, oh yeah. This is clearly 70s. Look at the colors, kind of like rusty brown,” she explains.
Full of passion and determination, she was able to save up from learning and selling items made from the 1970’s or 1960’s that she finally made her dreams come true. Owning her own vintage store ready to be expressed and shown to others.
Vixens Vintage in Hyde Park is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 in the morning until 6 in the evening.