Secret Vintage comes to Oundle, Northamptonshire!

SATURDAY 6TH DECEMBER: Tap & Kitchen

The Secret Vintage Fair (Cambridgeshire) Team have only just recovered from the success of their last event in Stamford at the end of September, but they are certainly not resting on their festive laurels, they are already creating their next Christmas vintage event in the area on 6th December.

And this time, they are calling it the not-so-secret vintage fair as they have already unveiled the location- as they are teaming up to work in Partnership with brand new restaurant and bar The Tap & Kitchen, in Oundle. 

FIRST EVER EVENT IN OUNDLE:

The Secret Vintage Fair is coming to The Tap & Kitchen in Oundle, a brand new restaurant next to the Nene Valley Brewary, which has literally just opened, today on Monday 24th November. It’s also taking place on the same day as the Christmas Market in Oundle so it’s set to be an extremely busy day! Sign up to the Facebook event here.

Lucy says “We’re so excited to be teaming up with the Tap & Kitchen, it’s going to be a fantastic collaboration between this exciting new restaurant, part of the Nene Valley Brewary, and us. We are also fortunate this time around to be sponsored by Tilly’s Vintage Garden Party Hire who are supplying the marquees for the event alongside a host of traditional garden games”

The event on 6th December will be in support of the East Anglia’sChildren’s Hospices (EACH), with a portion of the door proceeds, and 100% of the charity raffle and other prize draw proceeds to EACH.

As is their trademark style, there will be vintage music, alongside a whole host of fabulous vintage and handmade traders, and vintage garden games, and the Tap & Kitchen will be serving delicious food and drink all day, from their extensive menu, which includes, breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner too. 

Birds of prey from local centre Hill Farm Bird of Pray & Wildlife Rescue will also be on hand at the entrance of the event, as owner Simon is keen to help collect donations for charity EACH.

Lucy said “We wanted to support EACH as they are such an important regional charity who do truly amazing work of an incredibly delicate nature. EACH care for babies and young people up to the age of 18, supporting families, children and young people living with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk from diagnosis to end of life and throughout bereavement. They do this through a range of services delivered where the family wish – in their own home, at hospital, in the community or at one of their three hospices in Milton, Ipswich and Quidenham. We are so thrilled to be supporting them, and you can help by donating to the birds of prey, or entering our charity raffle, plus enter our “Guess the name of the vintage dolly” contest to win £50 cash on the day, and £50 goes straight to the charity

Charlie from the SVF team says “We always make sure we create the right atmosphere at our events, and we only choose the finest vintage purveyors to trade with us, so as a customer you can be sure of finding only quality vintage, pre-loved, handmade and up-cycled goods at our fairs- but you also get to enjoy a wealth of nostalgic atmosphere too!”

Lucy says, “The best way to stay informed is to sign up to our mailing list, via our website to be the first to find out any news and information on our future fairs and secret locations! They won’t all be No-so-secret events! We look forward to seeing you in Oundle on the 6th December!” 

Entrance to the event is £2, free for accompanied under 15s.

Traders applications are now closed but those interested in having a future stall at the event should contact Lucy on stallholders@secretvintagefair.com with CAMBRIDGESHIRE in the subject line or apply via the link on our facebook page.

#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'

Secret Vintage Fair is Back in Town!

Colchester has been missing the unique style of The Secret Vintage Fair while we went on a secret vintage hiatus for a few months (see what we did there!) hatching plans for the future! But we are announcing our dates for the coming year now- kicking off on with our first full event in Colchester Saturday 23^rd August as well as exciting news about our expansion.

EXPANDING

The founder of The Secret Vintage Fair, Lucy, has relocated to Cambridgeshire and will be launching The Secret Vintage Fair in Cambridgeshire/Lincolnshire/Northamptonshire this year, while Janine, is focusing on events in Essex & Suffolk. And we are thrilled to welcome on to the team Hatty in Essex and Charlie in Cambridgeshire, both of whom will be supporting the newly expanding fairs. 

Hatty says “I’m really looking forward to getting involved with the Secret Vintage Fair, I've had a stall at nearly every one of their fairs and love how they run things, so it’s exciting to be involved with the secret”. Hatty runs the successful local vintage business “What’s Your Tale Nightingale?” and actively supports Colchester's indie businesses. Charlie has a huge passion for vintage homewares and a love of a nostalgic/vintage lifestyle and interiors, as she’s finished renovating her period home, and is looking forward to working with Lucy on their second territory, Cambridgeshire, with plans to also expand into Northamptonshire, and Lincolnshire too. She says: "I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to expand on my passion for all things vintage and can’t to wait to have a hand in helping these lovely ladies with the amazing Secret Vintage fair!"

BACK IN TOWN

The Secret Vintage Fair is returning to Colchester on Saturday 23^rd August to a central Colchester venue which we have not visited before! As always we promise it will be BIG, have full entertainment schedule, activities & workshops.  As always the event location is kept strictly under wraps, until a week before the event, being released first to those on the Secret Vintage mailing list and our social media followers... so make sure your first to be in on the secret and follow both our main Secret Vintage Fair page as well as our NEW Essex& Suffolk page for all the latest news (Cambridgeshire/Lincolnshire pages and events coming very soon!).  As always the event will be supporting a charity with a proportion of the door fee, a charity raffle and other activities. We will be announcing the charity soon.

Entrance to the event is £3 free for accompanied under 16s. Traders applications are open, those interested in having a stall at the event should contact hatty@secretvintagefair.com

POPPING UP

On top of that The Secret Vintage Fair are popping up at 2 events before we do our next fair. You can find us at The Great South Feastival on 26 & 27^th July at Thorpe Le Soken, and at Folk East on 15, 16 & 17^th August.  We were thrilled to be asked by both festivals to join them and we will be launcghing a competition on behalf of both events soon.

For now, something a little bit different for you…

More details coming soon about our next Secret Vintage Fairs on Sat June 27th, and also now Sat July 29th! Put those dates in your diaries! But first, here's a short musical interlude:

Parkway Dreams Review- Eastern Angles, @ Sir John Mills Theatre, Ipswich.

A musical documentary about ....Peterborough.

Peterborough- best known for the Queensgate shopping centre, roundabouts, the Passport Office, and the Train Station. Not a very vintage topic I hear you cry? Well read on and then make your own judgement on that one! And it just so happens to be the City where founder of the Secret Vintage Fair, Lucy, was born. It's not every day that The Eastern Angles produces a "musical documentary" about ones home town, so with much intrigue, Lucy went along to see it in Ipswich recently at the Sir John Mills Theatre. As a born and bred Peterborian, and a huge admirer of The Eastern Angles, She had high expectations...

"I did, and indeed I wasn't at all disappointed! This cracking production charts the expansion of Peterborough under the New Towns Act 1967, but actually spans a huge amount of history, right through from the 1940s, to present day Peterborough. It featured real life characters from The Peterborough Development Corporation and local/national politicians (including one Mr Charles Swift OBE who is still going strong as leader of the City Council in Peterborough today, after becoming a councillor there in 1954!!) and even Maggie Thatcher made an appearance or two with her trademark handbag! A pretty impressive number of characters featured actually, considering there were only 6 actors involved! 

There was also some very clever use of intertextuality from songs and TV quiz shows of the eras too, namely Crackerjack, Blankety Blank, and the Generation Game- (oh yes, who remembers these classic shows!) and the central story unfolded through use of a fictitious family who migrate to Peterborough from London in search of more modern facilities and a better family life; sold to them as some kind of new "Utopia". Bretton, my home for most of my childhood got a good mention, as one of the founding Townships built in Peterborough to house 20,000 people, which no development corporation had ever attempted before! I adored how dates and eras were further stamped out through use of mentions of Beatles songs, Football scores and other key dates in history such as the first concord flight in 1976! All very clever stuff. 

Plenty of awesome vintage costumes ahoy in this show, spanning 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s eras including some rather nice tweed for the boys! There were also some brilliantly comic songs, with characters declaring the post war expansion of News Towns was down to the fact that "Life is less Risky, we're feeling more frisky" and "The People are breeding, the Cities are teaming". Peterborough was also proud to have had the biggest Sainsbury's in the Country, but it was also soon able to boast the largest indoor shopping centre in the Country with 'champion store' John Lewis: Queensgate. It's funny to think that the place where I spent most of my youth growing up with school friends, actually opened in March 1982, when I was just a few months old, and was a HUGE factor in the development of Peterborough, having been 10 years in the making.

Simple but effective industrial/architectural style staging set the perfect ambience for this musical documentary, which certainly gave me an education. Just to add a note, those not from Peterborough will definitely enjoy this show too, with it's wit everyone every corner! It was a full house when I was there on Tuesday, grab a ticket for one of today's last performances if you are lucky enough!"