Stylist Takes On ‘Vintage’ Clothing Shop

Suzi Wilson, who worked as a personal stylist at J. Crew in East Hampton for 12 years, has moved to What Goes Around Comes Around, a shop also on Main Street that carries what it calls vintage women’s clothing, where she will be the personal stylist and general manager. 

Ms. Wilson studied art in London, where she grew up, and taught it for a while before opening three London dress shops, for which she also designed clothes. She recently told a visitor that she had worked with avant-garde and high couture designers in the London of the 1980s and 1990s, and they all used to exchange ideas in a casual, congenial atmosphere. She moved to the U.S. in the late 1990s and said she is now “delighted to be joining the team” at What Goes Around Comes Around.

Ms. Wilson learned what she said was an important lesson many years ago, that “women want exclusivity and individuality. They want to feel special and beautiful, which means different things to different people.” She has always striven to “make the customer’s whole experience as effortless and seamless as possible,” she said, which may account in part for her longtime following. She said she had another gift: “great passion and a gut feeling” for what will make a particular customer look great.

Many of the customers who come into the What Goes Around Comes Around are collectors, she said, of such fine items as Hermes bags. According to Ms. Wilson, wearing vintage clothing “transports one into a time of elegance, sophistication, and unmatched quality of genuine luxury construction,” pointing to the fine work on a Victorian looking undergarment that had been made into a dress.

The owners of the two-year-old East Hampton shop have been in the luxury vintage business for 22 years. They own shops in SoHo, Miami, Beverly Hills, and Roslyn. A team of buyers travels the world choosing to buy from auctions and private collectors, and the business now also does domestic online buying. Ms. Wilson said the owners want to stay open through the winter and are trying to bring in more men’s clothing.

Finny Akers, the shop’s director of retail sales, said he expects the East Hampton business to grow with Ms. Wilson’s “sales prowess, skill set, and following.” The only change Ms. Wilson said she has noticed in her 19 years in East Hampton “is that my loyal client list is growing.”