WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Karen Elson's Nashville

This morning, I decided it would be wonderful to visit Nashville.

Why Nashville, you ask? Well, in addition to being the country music hub of America, it seems the ‘Athens of the South’ is also quite the burgeoning Mecca for vintage shopping.

My co-workers have enthusiastically cited museums, music festivals, restaurants, performing arts venues and other cultural happenings that I MUST visit should I make the trek to Tennesee, but I have to admit that I’ve got a one-track mind here.

You see, I am a vintage fiend. Fiend.

“Ohhh you’re sooo original,” you think sarcastically as you read this, but listen up: This is a serious illness, and I’m currently vetting treatment facilities. Until then, like any true addict, I’m seeking my next big fix.

Case in point: Karen Elson’s boutique, Venus and Mars: The Showroom.

A couple of months ago, Libby Callaway (former NY Post fashion editor, originally from Tenn.) visited this grand city for Blackbook, and got a chance to meet with Elson and business partner Amy Patterson, a wardrobe stylist based in Nashville. This is how she describes the store:

“V&M is a fashion lover’s paradise. It covers two floors of a small house packed with carefully curated men’s and women’s pieces dating from the late 1800s to the early 1980s—many of them picked up by Elson on international modeling gigs.”

WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO VISIT THIS PLACE? It sounds like the bloody Six Flags of vintage clothing. Elson and Patterson should contract Callaway immediately to write all ad copy going forward. I am so sold.

That’s not all. As much as I secretly want to hide in the buses outside of V&M until Karen arrives and I can gush over her alabaster complexion in person, I will be much too busy scouring the other nearby shops: Savant Vintage Couture, Local Honey, Hip Zipper Vintage and more. Believe you me, if I fly my caboose all the way to the dirrrty south, I’ll have a list in hand, and I shan’t return without several suitcases full.

Now I just need to get there…

Photo credit: Photographer Nick Knight for British Vogue, October 2008.