Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Bridgette Fyvie
Bridgette Fyvie doesn’t just walk into a room. She sweeps in with the panache of a 1950s movie star: full skirts, scarlet-painted lips, hair coiffed into face-framing waves. In the words of Nat King Cole, she’s unforgettable. Her fashion sense is just half the story. Fyvie, 47, is also a collector of vintage décor—Midcentury furniture and 1940s kitsch paintings—that she works into the interiors of her Holly Hills home. Fyvie is a real estate agent and owner of Shop Hullabaloo, on Etsy, where vintage jewelry aficionados and costume designers for major movies and television shows discover time-worn treasures for their projects. We talked to Fyvie about her style icons and the appeal of unique pieces that help her stand out in a crowd.
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
How did you develop your interests in vintage clothing and housewares? Growing up, I watched all the ’40s and ’50s movies with stars like Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. How to Marry a Millionaire was one of my favorite films. I was also influenced by Frida Kahlo and Carmen Miranda for color and style. In high school, it was kind of cool to shop at thrift stores. It was budget-friendly. We wore things that were different, that nobody else was wearing, which appealed to me.
Was there a point when you switched from shopping thrift to exploring vintage clothing stores? Yes. I remember a day when my mom took me and a group of my high school girlfriends to Alice’s in the Central West End. That was my first time going into a vintage clothing shop. The ladies who worked there were so nice. They let us try on [clothes] for a couple hours. It was so much fun. We did a little fashion show and I remember falling in love with vintage. Shortly after that, I started going to Hullabaloo when they had a retail store on South Broadway, around 1983.
How did you settle on selling vintage as a career? I didn’t—at first. After college I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress. I was an extra on all kinds of TV shows, but I wasn’t making it as an actress, so I came back to St. Louis. In my late twenties, I found a job at the 30,000-square-foot Hullabaloo warehouse of vintage clothes on Washington Avenue. I did sales for them, traveled, and did trade shows in Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles. We even had a showroom in Tokyo. The people there love the American vintage.
What was it like to work there? Shop owners came to the St. Louis warehouse to shop for their stores. I did a ton of work with costuming for movies, theatrical productions, music videos, and commercials. When the customers would come to St. Louis, they would stay at my house. It was just perfect—such a fun job for me. That was back in the day when I found that job in the classified ads in the newspaper. Can you imagine that?
Today, you own Hullabaloo, and run it as an online business, specializing in vintage jewelry from all eras. How did that come about? My sister, Laura Foizey, and I bought the wholesale business from the original owner in 2007. We moved everything from the warehouse to my garage and started working from home, selling online at Etsy and drop shipping once a week. Laura has three children, and she’s incredibly busy, so today I’m the sole owner of Shop Hullabaloo.
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
What’s been interesting at Shop Hullabaloo now? I’ve had some of our jewelry show up in the latest season of Stranger Things. Last summer, a gal placed a big jewelry order for 1980s jewelry. I didn’t know what it was going to be used for; I just shipped it. And then I was watching the new season with my oldest son, and I said, ‘Those are my earrings and necklaces!’ It was pretty funny. I went back to the order so I would know what pieces to look for in the show, and I found more in other episodes.
What are your favorite vintage clothes to wear? It would have to be the dresses of the 1950s and ’60s—in particular, the ones with full circle skirts. I love that era. I have a lot of dresses.
You sell and warehouse from your home. Is your husband on board with your vintage obsession? He is on board with it. When we first started dating, I was working in the Hullabaloo warehouse. I would send him the most outlandish shirts I could find, really crazy loud Hawaiian shirts and tacky prints thinking, Oh, he won’t wear this one—but he did. I thought, He might be the one. What’s funny is now he’s known for his Hawaiian shirts—and his guitars.
