Karen Ponzio Photos
MINIPNG.
Audubon Street is a promenade of institutions that ignite creativity and keep it alight. For the past year that street has also housed the storefront of artist/designer MINIPNG (a.k.a. Eiress Hammond), who has made a home away from home for fans of her original handmade clothing as well as lovers of vintage pieces and accessories from the late ’90s and early ’00s. This Saturday, Sept. 23, she is co-presenting an event that will be bringing an even larger creative crew to the street from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The event, known as Offline on Audubon, is curated by Hammond and Matteo Feliz of Forgotten Flea vintage market. Feliz has run a variety of successful events revolving around vintage and thrifted goods throughout New Haven, from Edgewood Park to the The State House. The first one happened this past spring when Hammond wanted to bring the same vibe of what she was doing in other states to New Haven.
“New Haven already has a lot of great things, but I feel like people are constantly leaving the town to go experience fun stuff, or leaving the state in general to experience fun things,” she said. “I wanted to kind of bring something maybe people are leaving for here so they don’t have to leave.”
Hammond had been doing many fleas out of state herself and still does, “because I think it’s good to circulate my brand as much as possible and also, I have fun doing it,” she said. But she longed for something closer to home. The last event “was so much fun.” She is hoping this one will be an expanded version of that one.
“I think it’s going to be a whole different experience with all the students back, so I’m excited to see how that turns out,” she said.
Around 30 vendors will again fill Audubon Street, which will be closed to traffic for the event. Those vendors will sell clothing, jewelry, visual art, vintage, and antiques. There will be music, food, and even the chance to adopt pets from New Jersey’s North Shore Animal Shelter and Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter. Hammond is hoping this becomes a routine market with unique choices for everyone that is open three times a year: spring, summer, and fall.
As far as the rest of the year goes, the MINIPNG storefront is open every day except Sundays and Mondays, and features Hammond’s own designs as well as vintage from the late ’90s and early ’00s, which she said people often say is not “true vintage,” though she believes otherwise.
“I don’t think people want to accept the fact that that’s vintage now,” she said with a laugh. “I feel like I resonated more with late ’90s/early 2000s. That’s just the era I grew up in, so I’m a lot more familiar with that.” She occasionally carries older vintage pieces like slip dresses and half-slips, “if it fits the theme that I’m going for.”
An original MINIPNG design.
The MINIPNG brand name came from a combination of Hammond’s nickname Mini combined with png, the type of file she used to save her Procreate artwork. Her original drawings that adorn the walls, as well as some of her handmade pieces, are the focal point of the store. She has made all types of clothing, depending on what feels right to her in that moment.
“I’ll have phases where I make just tops and then I’ll have phases where I make just bottoms,” she said. “Right now, I’m in a just bottoms phase, so I’m making a lot of bloomer type pants with a lot of lace, a lot of re-found materials, old crocheted pieces, and vintage lace.” She’s also used French vintage lace and old vintage pillow cases, noting that she likes to “clash materials” as well.
Hammond began making the clothes that would lead to the MINIPNG brand back in 2018 while in college for pre-law.
“I’ve always been a really artistic person, but I felt like I was kind of missing something since I was always focused on something very serious,” she said.
As she got into creating in her free time, one of the pieces she made went viral on social media. The design, which she had copyright protected, ended up being copied and sold by numerous online stores, requiring her to obtain a cease and desist order to send out to those vendors. She also made a video about the incident that went viral and “generated this pretty big audience that kind of allowed me to express myself creatively.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and everybody was home, Hammond saw a big uptick in sales on her website. She ended up taking time off from college and focusing on her design work, traveling to New York, where she met new people and designers, setting her on the course that would lead to her storefront and beyond.
The entrance to the Audubon Street store.
All of the drawings on the walls inside the store are MINIPNG originals, which she said people seem to be drawn to when they enter the store for the first time.
“That’s what initially brings people in,” she said, adding that the store has become many customers’ “little secret” and “home away from home,” which she loves.
The 24-year-old calls New Haven home herself, having grown up with her grandparents between Cromwell and Middletown, though her family is originally from New Haven and Brooklyn.
“All I used to do when I was a kid is literally just make books,” she said. “Every day I would make some kind of book. My grandparents thought I was going to want to be an author.”
She has recently set her sights back on college, starting this semester at University of New Haven for graphic design and animation. She is hoping to apply those skills to her business and beyond. Then there is also her dream of opening another storefront in New York, where she continues to vend at a variety of events and festivals throughout the year.
Hammond is also working toward her first manufactured collection that is set to release this fall, the first piece that she is not handmaking, but whose design she has been working on for almost a year. The plan is to do a re-release and a rebranding of her website, so once the collection releases, the website, which is currently down, will also release.
But until then, there is the store on Audubon Street — which also includes knitting and screen printing, some pieces involving two or more of those in one design. Some pieces are funky, some frilly, but all have vitality and vivaciousness, whether they’re Hammond’s or from a selection of pieces that she is showcasing from designers she finds online or knows personally.
A small selection of what the store offers.
“I try to get a mix of out-of-state and in-state because I want people to be able to experience things that they would normally have to buy online in one place,” she said.
Hammond is also hoping to add a retro gaming section, where customers can buy, sell, and trade video games.
“I was a huge gamer as a kid, so I would really like to incorporate a lot of the things from when I was young,” she said.
That has been a sentiment Hammond has heard from many customers, especially ones around her age.
“I have a lot of stuff in here that people will be like, ‘oh I remember this from when I was a kid, I didn’t have the money to get it then, but I’m going to get it now,’” she said. “That’s really exciting for me to hear. I love stuff like that.”
Hammond has also seen a trend within the last five years of more people shopping secondhand in general.
“I think people found out that … you just spend way less if you’re buying secondhand,” she said, adding that she thinks people just like things from the past.
“I always say all the time that we’re progressing but we’re regressing,” she added with a laugh, relaying how, even with new technology coming out all the time, people still want things from the past, like film cameras.
“People like to interact with things, people like making things to feel meaningful, and I feel like as time goes on with our technology, where things get less and less meaningful, that we’re kind of doing a U turn and we’re like, ‘wait a minute, I want to have that feeling again that I felt when I was using this as a kid.’ I feel like my brand is also geared towards that, making your inner child happy, because I’m a big advocate of that.”
Hammond wants people to know that the store is a “unique experience” and hopes to have more people come to visit it, whether during the event this Saturday or any other time.
“When you come in here, I always say it boosts your serotonin levels,” she said. “Everything is super bright in here. We have fun in here, and we try to make the shopping experience unlike any other. You can ask us questions, like ‘how does this look on me?’ Nothing’s embarrassing in here. Everything just is.”
Offline on Audubon is scheduled for this Saturday, Sept. 23, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., with a rain date of Oct. 14. For more information, visit the MINPNG Instagram page.