Photo: Courtesy of Ameli Lindgren Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story Welcome to The Scoop , a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week.
This week’s guest is Ameli Lindgren, owner of Nordic Poetry, which, according to British Vogue , is one of the best vintage stores in the world and, according to my banking app, is where my son’s college tuition is being spent.
Nordic Poetry started as a small vintage market stall in 2007 and evolved into a vintage designer business in 2013, when Ameli secured a small store in London’s Boxpark Shoreditch mall. In 2017, she moved Nordic Poetry to Bethnal Green Road; it’s that store's pink walls you see in the background of all those Instagram Reels featuring Charli XCX, Gabbriette, and all their wedding guests trying on Tom Ford-era Gucci.
Ameli is currently working on Nordic Poetry’s fourth chapter, developing a curated fashion archive. I called her to get the scoop on that and to see if she has anything special prepared for London Fashion Week.
I wanted to kind of honor Seán McGirr’s first McQueen show in London with one of the rarest McQueen items in my archive. It’s this mask from Alexander McQueen’s Fall/Winter 1996 Dante collection, designed by Simon Costin. I believe only seven were made, and only two are circulating in the world right now. One is in LA, and the other is in our archive at Nordic Poetry. It’s an incredible piece of fashion history.
It actually first came up in an auction I lost; then, years later, another one came up at auction. I got that one. I was so sad the first time around when I lost. But you win some, you lose some.
Well, you lost, and then you won. Is the mask for sale at Nordic Poetry?
This is a piece I would never sell, which is why it’s in our archive. It’s a direction I want to take more in the future: I’m working on building up a strong archive with pieces of real historical value. It’s more like creating a museum of fashion, I suppose, and I also want to start renting out to museums. Museums are definitely another market to look into.
We now have nearly 200 pieces in the archive that we won’t sell. We do rent them out, though, to celebrities or stylists for shoots, but those pieces don’t really have a price.
The vintage Alexander McQueen FW96 crucifix mask from the ‘Dante’ collection.
Tell me a little bit about why you set up Nordic Poetry and when.
I started very early. I was brought up in Stockholm in Sweden, and my mum used to resell my clothes at the market. I remember running around to other stalls also run by mums and picking out stuff that I liked. My mum would be like: “No, no, we are here to sell your clothes. Not for you to buy new ones.”
When I moved to London about 20 years ago, I decided to set up a small market stall in Brick Lane. I didn’t do high-end stuff initially, but I sold vintage clothing. As my business grew and I made some money, I started buying designer clothes, and in 2013, we moved to a store in London’s Boxpark under the banner “Nordic Poetry”. Eventually, in 2017, we moved to the store on Bethnal Green Road, and I started investing in more rare pieces. Now I’m only really focused on rare designer pieces.
You have a very successful Instagram and lots of celebrity customers, who also appear on your Instagram page. Did that happen by chance, or is there a strategy?
Our Instagram account has always been an extension of our store. And I have always been interested in…