Our History
Our little vintage dream began many years ago when we set up an eBay account to sell our own old and unwanted clothing and make a little ‘Silly Money’ along the way (money for outings, pizza, gin and other such lovely things). This little hobby ran nicely alongside our full-time jobs and was a great way to recycle unwanted garments, make a little money and have some fun in the process.
Soon we had emptied our wardrobes of unworn items and wanted to keep the fun going, without selling the shirts off our backs! This is when we decided to combine our love of vintage with our little hobby and set up Toxic Vintage Clothing Company.
In 2017 armed with eBay and Etsy stores, and a small collection of handpicked vintage goodies we started selling to you lovely people. We began dedicating more and more time to our little online stores, working in the evenings, at weekends and any time we were not at our day jobs. We spent our free time hunting through vintage stores, steaming, measuring, packaging and posting.
Gradually our little business got bigger and bigger. Rails were set up in Tara’s attic to store the mounting volume of vintage beauties and we were getting out and about, setting our tent up at vintage fairs all around Yorkshire and surrounding areas. It was at one of these fairs, where we met an incredibly lovely lady who very kindly showed us the ways of Instagram (thank you Lorna!). Very soon afterwards we set up our Instagram page and this opened our eyes completely to the Social Media Vintage Clothing Community, and instantly we fell in love!
2020 was a big year for everyone with the COVID pandemic changing the shape of lives all around the world. This was no different for us, the unprecedented shift in shopping habits led to us having an unexpected and overwhelming first lockdown. To keep up with demand we roped in friends and family to package orders, measure and list items online. This led to us both taking a leap of faith, leaving our full-time jobs and dedicating all our time and attention to Toxic Vintage. The ‘Silly Money’ has now very much become sensible money and is supporting our little families.
Even with both of us working full-time there still was not enough hours in the day. To keep ourselves sane and allow us to fulfil the many ideas in our heads we were honoured to have our oldest and dearest friend Danielle join the team in the Summer of 2021. What an impact on Toxic Vintage she has had too! Very soon afterwards we were absolutely blown away to reach 10k followers on Instagram and felt the time was right to expand and create our own website.
With a massive thank you to Jason, Hayley’s Hubby, we have our beautiful shiny new website, which we could not wait for you all to see! We hope you all have fun browsing and we will speak to you soon.
Hayley, Tara & Danielle xXx