Vintage clothing store newest addition to downtown Sudbury

Starlotte Dresen and her vintage clothing shop, Starlotte Satine Vintage, are the newest additions to downtown Sudbury.

Dresen was chosen as top entrepreneur out of 19 entrants in a business recruitment initiative called Win This Space.

Win This Space is a program developed by Downtown Sudbury and the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation to help up-and-coming entrepreneurs put their new business ideas into action.

It's worth one year's rent, and also provides a booster package that includes marketing, covers some business banking fees and includes membership in Sudbury's Chamber of Commerce. In total, the package is worth approximately $49,000.

The end result, Dresen said, has been a "dream come true."

"I've definitely been working towards this for over four years now and being able to kind of see this store open and have it be reality...it doesn't really feel real yet, and feels like a dream for sure."

Dresen said the opening of her shop on Friday was "incredible."

"I knew it was going to be a really big event just because after posting the event on Facebook and seeing the huge response and knowing how excited people have been for the last three years...I knew it was going to be really big."

Dresen said she went "all out" for the opening.

"We did this huge 10-hour day with all these people and we did the ribbon cutting and there was confetti and champagne and cake and dancing and singers and it was just a really magical moment," she said. "There was a lot of love in the room."

Dresen grew up in 'old-fashioned' household

Her love of vintage clothes comes naturally, Dresen said. 

"I grew up in a very old-fashioned kind of household," Dresen said. "My great grandmothers both lived to 100. So I grew up with them in the summertimes and they kept everything, so a lot of my summers as a child growing up was just going through all of their old things from generations past."

Dresen said her other passion —  burlesque performance — coincides nicely with the shop's vintage aesthetic.

"For me vintage means that it's clothing or items from a past time," she said. "But there's always a debate on how old vintage can be. A lot of the times I consider vintage from the 90s to the 20s or even older."

"But nowadays, as time goes on, obviously everything becomes vintage in some way."

To hear the full interview with Starlotte Dresen, click the audio link below.