Scarlett Baker: enchanting vintage shops in northern Europe

Scarlett Baker: enchanting vintage shops in northern Europe

Scarlett Baker is editor-in-chief of the watch website The Next Hour and has been editor of Man About Town and deputy editor of Wonderland. She’s a self-confessed fashion observer (who has had stints working with Katie Grand at both LOVE magazine and Perfect magazine), and what she describes as ‘a horology fanatic’. But when it comes to clothes, Baker has a penchant for vintage. Here, she reveals two vintage treasure troves she is aching to revisit.

Back in the days of blogger.com, I was obsessed with a girl named Maja Ravn. She was in the era of Tavi Gevinson but was very understated. She took pictures in her garden and wrote about her day, which I emulated by taking gross photographs of myself at age 14 with a shed in the background. Ravn would wear Acne Atacoma wedges, weird looking shoes with silver strips on the bottom. She was on the cover of a magazine you couldn’t purchase in the UK.

Somehow, I managed to gatecrash my parents’ trip to Copenhagen so I could buy the magazine, pretend to be her and visit the places that she’d visited. Among beautiful houses on a backstreet no tourist would find, FN92 was a tiny vintage store she loved. It was full of antiquated items and felt like going back in time and walking into a Victorian dressing room. There were incrediblepieces from as early as the 19th century, many of which were very expensive. I didn’t come out with much.

I always want to find the spots only locals would know. On a trip to Belgium, my friend from Antwerp told me I had to go to this shop, which isn’t well-known but truly has the best vintage stuff in the city. It’s called ROsier 41and is on the ground floor of a modern building. Entering is to be exposed to a large dose of synaesthesia; there is so much going on you’ll invariably think you need more money in your bank account. When I was there it had a great selection of Belgian designers, and a host of archive items from the infamous Antwerp Six, from pre-loved Ann Demeulemeester to vintage Dries Van Noten.

My parents were having a coffee a couple of streets away, enjoying the sunshine, when inside the shop I found a white Balenciaga Mini Bolsa bag for only €200. I thought, the stars are aligned: this is meant to be mine. The shop took cash only, and naturally I had nothing in my purse. I shoved the bag in a corner and ran outside to take out €200. ‘You don’t need another bag,’ my parents said. ‘You don’t understand. You’ll never pay €200 euros for a Balenciaga bag.’ I ran back in and begged the shopkeeper to keep the bag aside for five minutes. I remember sprinting back, worried she wouldn’t have kept it there. But I bought it and it has pride of place on my arm today.

FN92, Bryggervangen 76, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark; FN92shop.com.