Julia in her shop

Dressed to impress on the silver screen

Julia Dollimore has decked-out the cream of Hollywood from her vintage clothing store, writes Dan Carrier

MADONNA liked wearing her clothes so much she asked her if she could buy them: but Julia Dollimore, proprietor of the vintage clothing store Modern Age, said a firm no.
She had decked-out the pop mega star in outfits for her role as Eva Peron in Evita – and when filming was over, Madonna asked to keep them. And when Julia said the clothes were definitely not for sale, no matter who you are, Madonna decided to hire them for a year.
Julia’s shop is packed with clothes from the 1940s and 1950s – a time when clothes were carefully tailored – not mass produced – stitched by hand and were supposed to last a life time.
Other film-makers flock to her doors – Penelope Cruz, currently filming in Spain, wears clothes provided by Julia. She also kitted out the cast of the Tom Hanks blockbuster Saving Private Ryan, and West Hampstead-based actress Imelda Staunton in Mike Leigh’s hit Vera Drake.
But Julia’s shop in Chalk Farm and her warehouse in Walthamstow – which boasts railings that hold 20,00 original clothes spanning the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s – started from humble beginnings. A fashion student, she liked to wear vintage clothes – and her love for mid-20th century-style turned into a business.
“My mum had a lot of 1940s clothes in the loft and so I wore them all,” she says.
“She and my father were reasonably trendy and they had some nice clothes. And I used to trawl through them, as I always wore these types of clothes myself.”
She was asked by her fellow students where they could get similar items for themselves – and she started buying bits and pieces for her friends. She recalls: “I enjoyed looking for certain types of clothing. I would come across so many nice things, that I decided to start selling them.”
It was the late 1970s and Camden Market offered cheap rents. She set up a weekend stall in the Hawley Street market area and hired an arch in what is now the Stables Market for a few pounds a week to store stock. It was the first vintage clothing stall seen in Camden, the forerunner to the dozens that trade there now.
She recalls a Camden High Street vastly different from today’s clothing Mecca.
“I was the only person there selling vintage clothing – it was one of a kind. The High Street was a proper high street back then: there was a Co-Op, a fishmonger, and a fruiterer.”
Camden was still busy though. She remembers: “The markets had a license to trade on Sundays – back then it was illegal for the West End department stores to do so. People would be falling off the pavements it was so busy.”
In the 1980s, it wasn’t too hard to find stock.
“People still had lots of 1940s clothes back then,” she recalls. The stall expanded and then became a shop called Siren on the high street. As word spread, Julia found herself searching further a field for clothing.
She adds: “I travelled to America, around once every six weeks – New York, Boston and Washington.
“They have a lot of dead stock – basements full of clothes that have never been sold, and never been worn. They are in mint condition and so I buy up what I want and bring them over.”
Julia has a stock of 20,000 items of clothing – and a warehouse full of snappy suits and gorgeous dresses, which makes her first call for film makers looking for the original vintage outfits.
Her business really took off in the 1980s.
“We would get all sorts of people coming in. Rock-a-Billys, New Romantics, Punks – they all found things in my stock they liked,” she says.
Dressing up for a night out is coming back in vogue. The burlesque fashions of trendy party organisers Lost Vagueness – who run a field at Glastonbury each year, featuring cabaret acts and exotic sideshows – is joined by the International Club, based in Islington, offering live acts and DJs spinning music from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Tim Hardy’s ‘Hellzapoppin ’ swing and jive nights at Primrose Hill’s Cecil Sharp House are consistently full. Throw in the rash of Frank Sinatra inspired tribute nights currently filling West End theatres and it seems Londoners at the moment are falling over themselves to pull on vintage cloth and get down to the sounds of the mid-20th century.
Julia believes the trend is partly because it offers a pretentious-free night out.
“People look fantastic, but there is no pressure,” she says. “These places are not pick-up joints like so many night clubs – they are about listening to good music, looking cool and having a good dance.”
But although the style is timeless, Julia has found that many of the clothes of the 1940s and 1950s no longer fit people today.
She explains: “People’s sizes have changed. Girls do not have such thin waists, and they are taller. Men are bigger too.”
But Julia has the answer. Using skills she picked up at fashion college, and using her stock as the pattern, she now produces her own clothing – in vintage cloth, vintage cuts but just tailored for the modern figure. Her shop has off-the-peg summer dresses that any self-respecting, pony tailed 1950s lady would love to wear.
A friend in the rag trade has stocks of original 1940s prints, and Julia has used patterns so she can produce new dresses.
“I choose the styles I like and take it from there,” she says.

CLICK BELOW TO SEARCH FOR ACCOMODATION