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Pinup Polly

Here Digger talks to Caroline Horrocks at recently-formed Pinup Polly. Caroline loves vintage and, having established a family, Caroline decided to create an online boutique that brings together some of the lesser-known vintage brands from around the world.

Many of these 40s and 50s designs are exclusive to Pinup Polly...

Digger: Hello Caroline. How are you?

Caroline: I’m okay thanks.

Digger: Can you please tell us your background?

Caroline: I don’t have a lot of background really. I’m thirty now and met my husband when I was twenty-one and we decided to put his career first. So we moved around three or four times. As my husband was earning, we thought we’d have children while we were younger and then I’ll do it the other way around and have a career after.

Digger: I wish I’d gone around the world when I was very young.

Caroline: Yes, that’s one thing I do kind of regret because my brother travelled several times round – he’s slightly older than me. One day… (Laughs) When they're grown up I’ll still be young and fit enough.

Digger: Yes, you will be. Fifty is the new forty and forty the new thirty so you’ll be alright. So, it's a new business Caroline. Where did you get the name and what’s it all about?

Caroline: We started about three months ago, though I did originally start all the prep in May and the name just came out of nowhere at the pub.

Digger: Was it a two o’clock in the morning in the pub brainstorm light-bulb moment?!

Caroline: No, I always knew I wanted my own business. My father had his own business, my brother's got his own business and I wanted to do something. And they say you should do something you’re interested in. I was already selling a little bit of vintage fashion on eBay.

Digger: Did you do okay on that?

Caroline: Yes, but it's a lot of effort for a little reward when you're sourcing stuff and then selling it on eBay.

Digger: Do you wear vintage on a day-to-day basis Caroline?

Caroline: Yes I do. I have a fifties dress on now...

Digger: Did you see the programme on BBC 4 - it was about David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton in New York? That’s worth seeing, if only for the vintage look and clothes that Shrimpton wears. It was called We’ll Take Manhattan and was about them going there for a Vogue photo shoot in the days just before The Beatles broke through and British music and popular culture became the centre of the world.

Caroline: Cool. I’ll have to take a look at that.

Digger: Please... go on Caroline.

Caroline: ... So I was searching for the name and for some stock and said to my husband “I know what I’ll call it, I’ll call it Pinup Polly.” And actually I really liked that having said it on a whim. I found out no-one else had the name. I found that, as I was approaching people, it was a name that everyone remembered.

Digger: Are people expecting it to be a bit risqué as a result of the name?

Caroline: I think my original worry was that people would think I was a pinup model with that name but at least it sticks in the memory. I was at the bank and said who I was and they said “Oh yes, I remember the name. We were talking about the name in the office.” So that’s a good sign.

Digger: It’s alliteration when the words start with the same letter. Very useful foe the memory.

Caroline: It is. Pinup Polly.

Digger: A good way to remember things. We’re very simple animals, aren't’ we? (Both laugh)

Caroline: Yes, we’re all trademarked up and everything now.

Digger: So tell us more about the vintage-inspired clothes and accessories you offer.

Caroline: The problem with vintage fashion is that there’s less and less of it and it’s very expensive now and it doesn’t last very long. I bought a lot of my own dresses and the zips go, you get holes in them and you can’t really wash them properly – everything has to be dry cleaned.

Digger: Somebody mentioned to me the other day that ladies used to get a lot of wear out of them so some are quite threadbare to start with.

Caroline: Yes, they probably would only have had five or six outfits which they would have accessorised. So with my own dress sense I was looking towards reproduction fifties fashion. I came across loads of companies and that’s where it started really because there are loads of great companies out there worldwide. There are a few very well-known companies that you can buy on other sites in the UK but I guess I was trying to find our USP – more smaller brands, a lot of them run by women with small companies and getting those into one shop. And they’re all made with limited quantities and I think the cut and the fabrics are great. That’s how it started.

Digger: You mentioned the USPs there. That’s how you’re trying to stand out, by bringing together the smaller brands, not all the obvious names and trying to source from the UK if you can?

Caroline: Yes. A lot of them are in the States or Australia, Sweden. They are quite worldwide because obviously in America it’s such a big thing out there – Rockabilly fashion, so a lot are from the USA. But there’s a lot from Europe too. In Berlin there’s a big Rockabilly scene as well. As it’s becoming more and more fashionable more are popping up.

Digger: The retro thing’s quite big in Germany as well, although their interest in stuff is mainly between the wars. Why are vintage and retro such a big thing generally do you think?

Caroline: We put an advert in the vintage section in Vogue a couple of months back and they have just put an ad in for us again for free and there’s a big fifties special in there next month. I think it’s because it’s classic isn’t it? It’s created to flatter the female figure and looks great and that’s why I think it keeps coming back again and again.

Digger: Are there any issues with the modern female figure and trying to squeeze it into older clothes?

Caroline: The waist sizes back then were tiny and that’s why reproduction vintage has an advantage. And also the heights – I have an old chart used for models from the fifties and the highest it stops at is five foot six, which surprises me.

Digger: And you’re probably taller than that.

Caroline: Yes, I’m five foot seven and I would say a modern UK ten or twelve would be a sixteen in vintage terms.

Digger: Wow.

Caroline: That just goes to show – I guess rationing in this country was maybe why the waist was slightly smaller. Not a lot of good nutrition in the forties, I suppose.

Digger: I’m a fatty and have been one since I was about twenty. I was only slim in my teens when I discovered girls but now I am the same as 40% of the other people who are overweight – I used to be unusual but now everybody’s got bigger.

Caroline: Yes, it’s the diet basically.

Digger: I do exercise and cut down but can’t seem to shift more than a few pounds.

Caroline: I hate exercise – my husband got up and went for a fifteen mile run this morning. He’s doing 45 miles in March.

Digger: He’s got all those pasties to work off. (Both laugh)

Caroline: I was thinking when I was dropping my little boy off to school this morning. He must have different genes because I was absolutely freezing and didn’t want to get out the car – there must be something different with him because you would never get me running up a massive hill in the cold.

Digger: These runners claim they warm up with exercise but I wouldn’t do. Thank God we’re all different anyway. So what about your retro and vintage passions personally apart from the clothes Caroline?

Caroline: I like the Christian Dior new look – the big white skirts and the petticoats rather than the wiggle dresses. I’m much more of a full-skirted girl and I like all the lingerie as well because it all nips you in – the corsets and things. You don’t have to worry too much about what you eat.

Digger: I was talking to a lady the other day who told me that corsets for men are a big thing now.

Caroline: Ah! They used to be. You could get them for your back.

Digger: This was for people who are using them for waist training.

Caroline: Oh yes, I see. I know Next launched some Shapewear tops and fashion things.

Digger: I just wonder where all the bulges end up going.

Caroline: My mum always says that –“The trouble is it just spills out somewhere else.” It’s got to go somewhere!

Digger: Just like when you squeeze a squeezy ball? What do the forties and fifties mean to you Caroline?

Caroline: I think the femininity and the idealism – we’re talking about fifties Americana. My Nan passed away last year – she was in her nineties but she said “We didn’t have all this in Britain in the fifties. We couldn’t afford it and didn’t have any money, but there was that escapism watching all the films and a big night out with all the glamorous stars with us wanting to emulate them.” I think definitely there’s an idealism and also it was slightly conservative as well with the fashions for the older generation which we don’t have today. And it was the youth as well, the teenagers.

Digger: 'Yoof!'

Caroline: (Laughs) Yes, yoof. It was the first time you didn’t dress like your parents. My mum was a child/teenager in the fifties and she said there was a rebellion against what your mum and dad wore.

Digger: That’s true – you used to see young people dressed in a version of what their parents were wearing and they looked forty or fifty when they were only in their teens or twenties. Suddenly that all changed.

Caroline: Yes. When my children were born I was looking at some of the vintage fifties clothes and was shocked by the trousers for the little boys and so on. I guess it’s because I have an hourglass shape, which is why I love the fifties, because my mum’s only five feet tall and her youth was in the sixties and she is tiny. She had a 22” waist, she looked like Twiggy and she could get away with wearing things like that but I don’t get away with things like that at all. But also I think the sixties is such a striking look, isn’t it? It makes you stand out.

Digger: I like the decades through from the twenties right through to the sixties – I think they’ve all got a discernible look and even with the austerity of the forties, they still did a lot with it.

Caroline: Yes, the forties look is beautiful with all the hats and everything. Some of the hats I’ve seen I think “Ooh, I’d like to wear that” and then I think maybe I’d stand out too much!

Digger: Until the late sixties we were aspiring towards America – we just didn’t have all the stuff. We saw their kids driving cars, colour TVs in all rooms and we couldn’t believe what we saw in the films and TV from the USA. We’ve caught up now but it was definitely aspirational then. Who are your typical customers?

Caroline: My typical customer is actually north of the country. I’ve been quite surprised, but they really like dressing up.

Digger: How could you have known that? Strange isn’t it?

Caroline: It is strange. When I did some market research I did think of Chester and Newcastle where women do like to dress up.

Digger: Liverpool and Yorkshire are both big for vintage as well.

Caroline: Yes, we had some customers from Merseyside and that was surprising. But when I thought about it I wasn’t too surprised because my brother went to university in Newcastle and I’ve seen how they like to get dressed up.

Digger: No jokes about the north being fifty years behind here! That north/south divide thing doesn’t seem relevant anymore. What are the best and most enjoyable aspects of what you are doing?

Caroline: I think working for myself – having small children that’s good. And it’s nice meeting people at vintage fairs. Maybe next year we’ll do some of the bigger festivals. I think Goodwood’s a good one.

Digger: It’s in Northamptonshire this year, just down the road from me. Twinwood is a good one to go to too. They are very into the look and image there and they all love to dress up in forties and fifties and to dance. So what of the future Caroline?

Caroline: Just to grow the business and in an ideal world I’d love to have a shop but I don’t think it’s really worth it at the moment. The high street costs are just so expensive, especially in Exeter. It’s not like Bath or Bristol, where you’ve got all the nice little lanes with shops in. I think the cheapest shop in Exeter is about £30,000 a year which is off the beaten track so I don’t know. Just growing it and getting a lot more brands in and travelling around the country more and getting out there, I think.

Digger: That’s important. Premises are a nice to have but such an overhead for a start-up. The Internet does give you a low-cost option.

Caroline: For a shop you have the rates and the rent and then you need all the stock – a lot more to kit the shop out and to sell. I’m quite happy at the moment just having it online and seeing what happens.

Digger: It’s a good way to do it and you’ve not just got the UK market, you’ll start to attract people from overseas as well. Sounds like you have things pretty well mapped out Caroline. The best of British to you.

Caroline: Thanks David.