The vintage and costume shop on Broad Street that took over Fat Man’s Forest’s inventory is closing in June and reopening under a new name and owner in August.
Augusta native Caren Bricker first opened Vintage Ooollee 15 years ago after growing up going to garage sales and flea markets with her mom, she said.
“I was always the girl wearing old, weird clothes in high school and had a dream of opening a vintage shop,” Bricker said.
The store is focused on vintage clothes and costume rentals. The original costume rental inventory was purchased from Fat Man’s Forest, and they’ve added to that with creations of their own.
“Fat Man’s Forest was Augusta’s original iconic local store that everyone knew and loved, so getting the opportunity to carry that torch on was a real honor for me,” she said.
Bricker said the job has been fun and fulfilling.
“It’s never a dull moment,” she said. “You never know who’s going to walk in the door and what they’re going to want. You meet the most interesting people.”
Bricker, who turns 65 this year, is now passing the reigns on to a former employee, Jessica Netzler, who has spent the last three years working as a tailor at bridal and formal tailoring studio SewCo. on Broad Street. Bricker will stay on part-time to help Netzler with the transition.
“There is a lot of theater in town that depend on the shop, so it was important to me that it stays here,” Bricker said. “And I wanted it to go to someone who worked here and understood how the business worked.”
Netzler first worked as an intern at Ooollee when she was 18 and stayed on for three to four years, she said. Since then, she’s worked as a tailor on her own and for SewCo. She first had the idea to take over Ooollee about five years ago when Bricker first mentioned retiring in the near future.
“Bricker mentioned wanting to retire in the next five years, and I was so sad about it because I loved working there,” she said. “For the next week, I couldn’t get it off of my mind, so I reached out to her.”
The two vintage clothing lovers got breakfast soon after and chatted about the possibility of passing the business off to Netzler in the future. In late 2022, they picked the conversation back up in preparation for a handoff this summer.
Ooollee will close on June 30 and Netzler will open her store, Ensemble Sewing & Costumes, in August. The new store will be half costume rentals and half professional tailoring, with Bricker selling off the vintage clothes in an online auction before then to make space for the tailoring side of the business.
“We went for coffee in December, and she asked if I wanted to buy the store, and I knew immediately I wanted to,” Netzler said. “I had a peace about it.”
