Inside My Vintage Clothing Studio: The 2025 Vintage Reveries Relaunch

For a long time, my vintage journey on this blog stopped right around 2021. Which, in hindsight, makes sense—2021 was the year I was mentally done with everything and just trying to get through the day.

Back then, I was working for a construction company that treated the pandemic like an inconvenience rather than a mass-casualty event. We were considered “essential,” even though my work was mostly filing and office tasks, so I had to be in the office in person while people all around the city were getting sick and dying. At night, I went home and worked on the St. Louis COVID Memorial project, tracking obituaries and honoring the dead while still having to show up in-person the next morning like nothing was happening.

It was miserable. I’d taken that job after GreenLeaf Market because no one was hiring when the lockdowns hit (and it seemed legitimately safer than working in that grocery store with no health insurance, rattled by the first deaths from COVID who happened to also be regular customers). It was survival, not alignment.

So as soon as there was even a whisper of vaccines and hope, my brain started looking for an exit—any exit. And that’s when I came back to vintage.

Vintage saved me. Again.

I reopened my shop, pulled bins out of storage, started listing, started remembering how much I loved the whole process—photographing, describing, researching, connecting clothes to people. I made some solid sales, but more importantly, I woke my skills back up. That little relaunch in 2021 (which I wrote about here:
– “On December 20… I Am Sooo Overwhelmed”
– “Spring 2021 Was a False Re-Start (But It Had a Serious Upside)”
– “Vintage Clothing Boutique Relaunch 2021”

…ended up being my audition tape for a much better-paying e-commerce role.

I used those updated skills—SEO, listings, product photos, basic email marketing—to land a full-time job at an online retailer that paid around $15–20k more than the construction gig. It was a huge jump for me. And honestly, that e-commerce job was awesome in a lot of ways. I learned so much about:

efficiency and workflow,
why email lists aren’t optional,
how smart e-commerce design quietly guides people where they need to go,
SEO in the real world,
content marketing that actually moves the needle.

It was like getting paid to go to grad school in online retail.

But there was a catch: after spending all day in e-commerce, the last thing I wanted to do when I got off work was… more e-commerce. Combine that with long commutes and a return-to-office push, and my capacity for side projects evaporated. When they eventually called us back into the office five days a week—45 minutes in rush hour each way—that was my cue. I found a fully remote job and moved on, because my nervous system had nothing left to give to fluorescent lights and highway traffic.

Fast forward through a nonprofit chapter, a three-day job that turned out to be “the door that got me out of the room I was in,” and a level of burnout I didn’t fully register until I finally stopped… and here we are.

I’m between roles right now, with some savings, a supportive boyfriend, and something I’ve never had in this exact combo before: rest, perspective, and a fully stocked vintage operation.

This time, I’m in a fantastic position:

I have the supplies.
I have the racks, tissue, tubs, and garment bags to properly store and preserve even fragile pieces.
I have the experience from multiple e-commerce jobs plus years of freelance and WordPress builds.
I have a much clearer sense of what burns me out and what doesn’t.

And I have a renewed appreciation for vintage as both a business and a creative practice.

Why I Redesigned VintageReveries (Again)

On the tech side, I finally did something I’ve wanted to do for years: I rebuilt VintageReveries on a more flexible, modern theme.

For a long time, the site lived on Elegant Themes’ Extra theme. Before that it was on the old iThemes framework. Extra was wonderful when the site was mostly a blog with a very simple shop—but I knew I wanted to lean harder into e-commerce on my own domain. I’d been on Extra since about 2013, with a major redesign around 2014–2015, right before my life kind of blew up, I left my ex, and I stepped back from vintage for years.

This fall, I migrated everything over to the main Divi theme and did a drastic redesign:

A cleaner, more modern home page focused on shopping and discovery.
Better support for product-focused layouts.
More intentional category structure for both humans and search engines.
A layout that can grow with me instead of boxing me in.

I want more of my buyers to find me here, not just on the big platforms that take 15–25% in fees. When you shop directly on my site, I can often give a better deal while still making a fair profit—and I have full control over how pieces are presented, described, and archived.

And yes, I’m nerding out over SEO again. Of course I am.

How AI Is Helping Me Not Burn Out This Time

One of the things that burned me out in earlier seasons was cognitive overload. I do a lot of different things—website design, copywriting, marketing, analytics—so my brain is always juggling details. At 2 a.m., I might know exactly how to tell a bell sleeve from a cap sleeve, but that doesn’t mean my brain wants to recall it on command after a long day.

This time, I’m letting AI pick up some of the slack.

I’m using AI tools to:

sanity-check garment descriptions (is this technically a cape, a capelet, or a flutter sleeve?),
generate or refine product descriptions from my rough notes,
help with historical research.

For example, that recent blog post I wrote about St. Boniface Church / the old Ivory Theater in Carondelet? That was the first historical deep-dive I’d done on the blog since probably 2014–2015, and it felt so good to be back in that mode. I used an AI research assistant to help organize the historical details, but the curiosity and storytelling are mine. It made the process lighter instead of heavier.

And on listing days, when I’m tired from freelance work but still want to make progress, it’s a relief to brain-dump details and have a tool help turn them into clean, accurate product copy.

Where This Fits in My Bigger Career Picture

I’m realistic: I want VintageReveries to work as a business, and I’m going to give it the best shot I can. But I’m also open to the right kind of employment if the vintage side doesn’t grow fast enough to fully support me.

If I do go back into a role for someone else, I know a lot more about what I need:

a team that knows how to give clear, constructive feedback (even when it’s not pretty),
leadership that doesn’t run on jealousy, defensiveness, or hidden agendas,
an environment where I can use my e-commerce, content, and systems brain without being steamrolled or underutilized.

I can handle direct criticism. I actually prefer it, if it’s honest and professional. What I’m not interested in anymore is chaos dressed up as “fast-paced,” or silence where support should be.

In the meantime, I’m here:

rebuilding and refining VintageReveries.com,
listing vintage and historical ephemera in a way that honors where it came from,
using everything I’ve learned from e-commerce to make this site a genuinely good place to shop,
quietly taking on selective freelance and WordPress work when the fit is right.

My prices might seem a little high to some people at first glance—but I can always go down. I’m almost always open to reasonable offers, bundles, or custom deals, especially for repeat buyers and folks who value what goes into preserving these pieces.

What’s Next in My Vintage Journey

If you’ve been following along since the “I am sooo overwhelmed” days of 2012–2021, thank you. It’s been a long, weird, winding road. Reading those old posts now, I can see how much I’ve grown—not just in skill, but in boundaries, process, and self-respect.

Right now, I’m excited again.
I’m better equipped than I’ve ever been.
And I finally have both the tools and the nervous system capacity to do this in a way that doesn’t burn me out.

So:

– If you love vintage and want to shop, poke around the new site.
– If you’re a fellow reseller or WordPress nerd and want to talk tech, reach out.
– If you’re someone looking for an e-commerce / content / systems brain who also happens to know a shit ton about WordPress, SEO, and email… I’m open to the right conversation.

Vintage saved me once during a pandemic. It gave me skills I used to climb into better jobs. And now it’s my way back to myself again.

Thanks for being here for this chapter, too.