Essex and Suffolk Charity of the Year

The Secret Vintage Fair is coming back with a bang to Colchester this 2017 starting on Sunday 7th May 2017 in Colchester Town Centre, and we are thrilled to announce our charity we will be supporting this year- Autism Anglia.  At all Essex and Suffolk events we will be supporting them in a variety of ways from a proportion of the door fee, to raffle prizes and more!

Autism Anglia are an independent charity who work throughout East Anglia to ensure that people on the autism spectrum are valued, supported and celebrated as integral members of a diverse world.

Services in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, managed from offices in Colchester and Dereham, offer personalised approaches that provide each individual with the necessary skills and strategies to enable them to realise their own strengths and abilities.

The charity also seeks to promote a greater knowledge and understanding of autism through training, education and supplying information to the public and professionals.”

Autism Anglia have said “As a local independent charity we love to collaborate with local businesses to raise funds and spread acceptance of autism. We are really excited to be teaming up with The Secret Vintage Fair for this fantastic event!”

Pop over and give them a like on Facebook and join us at the Secret Colchester location to support them.  Don't forget to sign up to our mailing list to be first to know our secret location.

Christmas Fair: Colchester Charity Update

The Secret Vintage Fair are thrilled to be supporting Age UK Colchester for the next fair on Saturday 29th November at a secret location to be revealed on Friday 14th November in the Gazette.  We spoke to the Age UK Colchester tea to get a bit more nformation about who we are supporting this time round.

Independent Charity

Although known as Age UK Colchester the charity is a small, independent charity affiliated to the national body and is responsible for its own finances and fundraising. It receives a small grant from Age UK England and another small grant from Colchester Borough Council but must raise the rest of its funding itself and is therefore heavily reliant on donations and grassroots fundraising. Where applicable charitable grants are applied for but in the current economic climate these are increasingly hard to get. 

Age UK Colchester operates a number of services to benefit the older people of Colchester and its surrounding environs, including an Information Service; an Advice and Advocacy Service; a Consumer and Energy Advice Service; a Legal Advice Surgery; an Osteopath Surgery; and various social clubs and activities throughout each month as well as hosting a Toenail Cutting Service. Some of the social clubs and activities operate on a weekly basis, such as the social drop-in coffee mornings, Chairobics fun seated exercise sessions, Men in Sheds venture and a knitting group at the Waiting Room, where all ages welcome. Other groups include Activ8 and two Knit and Natter Groups. A befriending service is also in the process of being set up. 

If you would like to know more about our services or are interested in becoming one of our volunteers, without whose loyalty and dedication the charity would not be able to function, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01206 368420 or email enquiries@ageukcolchester.org.uk

Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/AgeUKColchester

Thanks to Age UK Colchester for telling us a bit more about the support they give. We are thrilled we can help continue a local independent charity to grow and support the community.  Please do like them on Facebook and come along to the fair to help us raise as much money as possible for them (a percentage of the door fee and 100% of raffle proceeds go to Age UK Colchester on the day).

#vintagefriday

Everyone's talking about #VintageFriday...are you?

Oxfam, Dawn O' Porter and the Secret Vintage Girls want to see you rocking your finest retro chic this Friday to raise money for a great cause!

It's simple!  Just don your fave vintage outfit or accessory with pride for #VINTAGEFRIDAY and donate £3 to Oxfam by texting* Vintage to 70066, helping to transform lives around the world. 

You could wear your vintage best to work, or why not consider having a vintage swap shop in your lunch hour or after work with some friends?

Remember to share your pics with us on our various pages (as below) or on twitter @secret_vintage! 

www.facebook.com/TheSecretVintageFair
www.facebook.com/SecretVintageFairEssex
www.facebook.com/SecretVintageCambridgeshire

ALSO...Remember it's the very last episode of This Old Thing tonight at 8pm on channel 4 the lovely Dawn has been such a huge promoter of vintage and done the industry proud with her TV show ...and our very own Lullabelle starred in last weeks episode...

Lullabelle presents Dawn O'Porter with a special gift! 

..here she is giving the lovely Dawn a specially made personalised vintage frame, ahead of getting her fab vintage jacket upcycled with the lovely Jax Black!

Lullabelle models her newly tailored vintage jacket during filming of This Old Thing for Channel 4 

So what are you waiting for- get cracking with preparing your fab vintage outfit to wear to work this Friday for #VintageFriday and don't forget to text VINTAGE to 70066 to send £3 to Oxfam! Read more about the campaign here

Don't forget to check out all of our upcoming vintage events..slowly spreading their way throughout East Anglia on our events tab on facebook!

*'Messages will be charged at £3, plus one standard rate message. By texting consent is given to future marketing by Oxfam. To unsubscribe from SMS send NOINFO to 70066'

Charity Calendar and Lots of Thank Yous!

Hello Secret Vintage Fans!

CHARITY CALENDAR

We've got big hearts here at SVF HQ and many of you will know that we, donated a lot time and resources to produce a charity calendar for the St Helena Hospice this year!

So to let you know, the calendar is now on sale in the following places in Colchester- who all feature in the calendar themselves!

OUR STOCKISTS:

Caffe Sala, Eld Lane.

Lesley's Girls Vintage - GO4 Market Cafe, Trinity Church. 

Memoirs Restaurant & Cocktail Bar , West Stockwell Street.

Minories Art Gallery, 74 High St.

The Old Auction Rooms, See Celeste from Divine Intervintage, 12-14 East Hill 

Revolver Retro, 35a Sir Isaacs Walk. 

What's your Tale Nightingale- GO4 Market CafeTrinity Church. 

If any one else would like to be a stockist please do get in touch!

They cost just £4 each and will make great stocking fillers for your loved ones this Christmas, but wait for it…the best bit is 100% of the proceeds from the sale of your calendar goes to the hospice! 

This has only been possible, thanks to the generous donation of the following people:

Alphaprint - who kindly produced 300 limited edition copies for us- with 100 already sold you'd better be quick if you want to get your hands on one!

Betty's Rock n Rollers - who donated all hair and make up products and expertise for all the shoots

Just Jaq - amazing photography and art direction from the lovely Jackie 

All of our amazing models and locations used- too many to mention- but all are credited on the back of the calendar!

From the bottom of our hearts- we salute you all for your time, money and expertise donated to help make this wonderful calendar happen, in just a matter of a few short weeks.

If we sell out, that's another £1200 also raised for the Hospice, so hurry up and buy one quickly!

AND A BIG THANK YOU!

Just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who came, saw, explored, traded, purchased, slurped tea, munched cakes, and enjoyed the fair last weekend in the Town Hall Colchester. 

Over 1000 customers came through the door, and we are thrilled to announce that over £2000 has been raised for St Helena Hospice from the event, with their stall and the portion of door monies and charity raffle all combined! This is utterly fantastic! 

We also raised an additional £150+ for Movember UK- though donations online and through the MO KING contest on the fay of the fair. We had some brilliant entries-here's our MO KING winner Ben Locker who win himself our coveted Secret Vintage MO KING T-shirt, for individually raising the most money for Movember UK.

We'd like to say a big thank you to Photo Booth Party Hire for helping us to raise the funds for Movember by admirably donating their profits from the day to the cause. Here's our MO KING runner up, our MO PRINCE, Chris! 

We'd also like to thank Clare's Vintage Tea Party for donating 10% of her profits to the hospice too.  We'd like to you with a few more pics of the inside of the fair- what a fantastic venue the Town Hall is!

Ciao for now! See you in the Spring at our next fair! Watch this space for more details!

Movember

Here at The Secret Vintage Fair we like to support local and national charities, therefore at our next fair on 30th November we are supporting both St Helena Hospice and also Movember.

We have started a Movember team with various organisations and people signing up to grow their mo's and donate to the team.  If you would like to join it's not too late- please sign up here. It's not just been Mo growers either- there are a series of local vintage shops vying to make their mannequins (or indeed shop logo's) grow the biggest mo's.  Check out the team page for details.

Movember is about raising funds and awareness for prostate and testicualr cancer, as well as mental health.  So by taking part in Movember you can said to quite literally be changing the face of men's health.

Mo King

Once again we will crown The Secret Vintage Fair Mo King on the day of the fair.  To qualify for entry we ask that you join the Secret Vintage Fair Mo team and thus help raise money for Movember, or if not on the day of the fair pay a £5 entry fee to our Movember stall.  More details on what our Mo King requirements will be are coming soon!  Entrants will be in with the chance of winning a cash prize plus a special Mo King memento.... oh and the pride that comes with being out Mo King.  

Introducing The Design Charity

This Saturday 27th July will see the return of The Secret Vintage Fair to Colchester in:

                    The Old Hippodrome (Liquid) on the High Street, Colchester.  

We always support a different charity each event, this time we are supporting The Design Charity.  As a fairly new charity we wanted to explain all about them and their aims here, so you know what we are helping to support.

Transformative, Healing Environments

In a nutshell, The Design Charity design and build transformative, healing, environments for other charities. They design both indoor and outdoor environments: whether a children’s play space for Kids Company, a healing sanctuary for Rwandan refugees, or an outdoor healing garden for homeless ‘companions’ at Emmaus. 

The common denominator is that all of their work aims to transform and heal the lives of the people they work with.

The charity is founded on, and fuelled by, cutting edge research to obtain the best possible environments- from the cutting edge of art and design, to the most progressive scientific and academic institutions across the globe.  The Design Charity reaches out to every sector of society.

Whether you are a family or a homeless shelter, a FTSE 100 company or a refugee orphanage, The Design Charity aim to design and build environments that inspire and benefit you. It is their aim that all of their environments will transform and heal the lives of the people they work with.

Supporting The Charity

The Secret Vintage Fair raise money for charities in different ways at every fair- this time round we will be contributing a percentage of the door takings to the fair, proceeds from the raffle (prizes can be seen here), as well as bucket donations on the day.  We give thanks to the volunteers at the fair who will be helping to raise funds and awareness for this new and exciting charity.  

Please show your support for the charity by following them on Facebook, Twitter or reading more about their charitable work here. They are also in the process of setting up The Eden Survey- carrying out valuable research into why nature is just so healing - you can follow progress on the Eden Survey Twitter account.

Stay tuned for our next exciting blog post previewing all the entertainment on offer at the event This COMING SATURDAY 27TH JULY! 

Narrowing it down..

We are so excited to be taking The Secret Vintage Fair further afield to the Essex/Suffolk borders on Saturday 29 June that we can't resist revealing just a little part of the secret... so we can tell you that it is taking place in Colchester's near neighbour just across the border- Ipswich.

We are incredibly excited to be heading to Ipswich: a town full of history, vintage and beautiful buildings.  As always we are supporting a charity with a proportion of door proceeds, and we have chosen St Elizabeth Hospice. St Elizabeth Hospice improves life for people living with a progressive illness, as well as their friends, families and carers. A full post on the work of St Elizabeth Hospice do will follow in the coming weeks.

The traders applications are in, the posters are coming hot off the press and the entertainment is in the pipeline, and we now look forward to bringing Ipswich our unique recipe for vintage fairs very soon!  Now we've narrowed the area- can you guess the venue?  One more clue- we are always central and always in a appropriate building for a vintage fair. Happy guessing!

The Secret Vintage Fair takes place on Saturday 29th June, 10.00 - 16.00. Entrance is only £1.50, and accompanied children under 10 get in free.  The Secret location details will be revealed on Friday 21st June via the Facebook page, Twitter and the website. Media Partner: Grapevine Magazine. Charity: St Elizabeth Hospice.

Please join the event on Facebook here for regular updates in your news feed, and look out for more news on the Colchester fair on 27th July coming soon.  Applications for stallholders at the Ipswich fair are now CLOSED and we will inform successful applicants next week, applications for the Colchester fair will be going out by the end of next week.

Castle Fashion

Our next post on the last Secret Vintage Fair (Sat 30th March in Colchester Castle) is to celebrate that of our first ever fashion show.  As the scale of the event increased, so too we felt, should the entertainment.  A fashion show had been one of the elements that we had wanted to include in the Secret Vintage Fair format for some time, and we are thrilled with how well it was received, especially as this was one of the charity fund raising elements for Headway Essex.

Model's included three of the fabulous Helles Belle's foursome, students from the Colchester Institute, as well as long standing vintage fans and Show Pony from Cheeky Tiki Island. The show was held together in the very capable hands of Adam Piercy, as a professional actor he had the spark to pull the show together.

Models showed off outfits from such traders as MaryLu Vintage, Revolver Retro, Divine Intervintage,  Cherry On The Top, Cheeky Tiki Island and Lesley's Girls Vintage: all to the backdrop of tunes collated by DJ Sukie (including one track by local band Surfquake).

The Helle's Belles model a range of original vintage dresses for our "Cute and Kitsch" section

Cheeky Tiki Island's collection of screen printed t-shirts and pants, teamed up with upcycled army jackets. Modelled by the creator herself- Show Pony.

Model's demonstrating the "Spring: Monochrome" selections from our traders

Finishing off the show was a stunning selection of outfits made for weddings- whether for the bride, groom, wedding guests or bridesmaids.

A huge thank you to all those involved in making the fashion show a great success.  Not all outfits showcased  in the fashion show have been featured here, if you are intersted in any of the outfits shown here or that you saw in the show please get in touch and we will point you in the owners direction (if they haven't already been sold!). we look forward to wowing the crowds with more fashion shows next time.

Photos of the Fashion Show courtsey of SJR Photography

Secret Vintage Fair Supports Headway Essex

As well as hosting some of the best vintage and retro traders the Secret Vintage Fair always supports a different local charity; for our next fair on Saturday 30 March in Colchester Castle we are supporting Headway Essex- a fantastic local charity providing brain injury care and support.

Imagine waking up and not recognising your own child, not remembering your family or friends and having to re-learn your life. Headway Essex cares for people who have acquired a brain injury and this may be through sporting or work accidents, road traffic accidents, assault, illness or disease.

Support is given in two ways. Through the Headway Centre, which is a day centre in Colchester where rehabilitation activities take place. These activities are designed to help people to rebuild their lives after brain injury. Headway Essex also has a Community Support Service. The Community Support Team, provides telephone support, information on the different aspects of brain injury, support groups, training for carers, specialist literature on brain injury, home and hospital visits and educational talks. Currently supporting over 290 families across Essex.

Win a Jungle Adventure family day pass as well  as these
vintage bunnies in the "name the bunny" competition (one is
genuine vintage Harrods)

The Secret Vintage Fair will be raising awareness and funds for Headway Essex at the fair by a proportion of door takings and  fashion show proceeds being donated to the charity. As well as activities on the door- from Name the Bunny to Guess the Weight of the Easter Cake- a Simnel cake made by professional cake baker Sally Blackmore.

As always we have a charity raffle with tickets available on entry - prizes including £75 of Kiss Me Deadly vouchers, basket of lingerie and vintage inspired items from Bluebella, 3 thank you cards worth £6 Russett & Grey ; a Lloyd Loom Chair valued at £35 from Gertrude & Charlie; a bottle of wine and a box of chocolate cakes worth £10 from Headway Essex; and canvas art with butterflies from Butterfly Art.  We are receiving more donations daily for the raffle so expect more!

If you are a charity interested in nominating yourself to be supported at a future event please get in touch with Clare here.

To find out more about Headway Essex visit their website : www.headwayessex.org.uk  Headway Essex is a Registered Charity No. 1008807 Patron: David Tennant