Burglar Hits Fashionista

A beloved, eccentric vintage clothing and accessory store on the border of Downtown and East Rock was burglarized this week, depriving the owners of several thousand dollars and of key information about their rental business.

On Thursday morning at 9 a.m., someone broke into the store, Fashionista at 93 Whitney Ave., and stole a lock box from behind the front counter, according to Fashionista co-owner Nancy Shea.

Shea said the box contained several thousand dollars in cash as well as a stack of envelopes with information about articles of clothing, jewelry, and other accessories that the store recently rented out to customers in exchange for a partially-refunded cash deposit. Fashionista was closed at the time; the store opens at 11 a.m. on Thursdays.

She said this is the first time that Fashionista has ever been burglarized, though someone did break one of the store’s sidewalk display windows last year.

She said that people should reach out if they find in their Dumpsters a broken black bankers box or a pile of envelopes with information about eccentric clothing.

“We’re being hit twice on this,” Shea said as she prepared to close up shop on Thursday, standing amidst the store’s racks upon racks of ​“ugly” Christmas sweaters, wide-collared shirts, bell-bottoms, and bright patterned dresses.

First, the store is out a few thousands dollars in cash, most of which needed to be returned to customers upon their return of rented items. (Fashionista rents out clothing and accessories in exchange for a full-value cash deposit, then returns two-thirds of that deposit when the borrowed item is returned. Shea assured this reporter that customers who have recently rented items from Fashionista will be made whole on their deposits.)

Second, the store has lost a well of information and receipts on which clothing was rented and how much that clothing rented for.

“We’re not a high-dollar operation,” Shea said. She and co-owner Todd Lyon are the only full-time employees at the store, which has operated out of the corner of Whitney Avenue and Trumbull Street for the past nine years after moving from another Downtown location where it spent its first three years. ​“We struggle to pay our rent every month.”

She said rentals make up roughly 25 percent of Fashionista’s business, renting out everything from 1950s prom dresses (what Shea described as ​“the holy grail” for a vintage store like Fashionista) to hats and coats for an upcoming puppet show at the Downtown bar Three Sheets.

Shea said she is convinced that whoever burglarized the store knew something about how the business operates. She said the burglar used a hammer to knock in the lock of the the store’s front door at 9 a.m., then went directly behind the counter and stole the black metal lock box. Nothing else was touched, let alone stolen, she said.

“We’re a good business for New Haven,” Shea said. ​“Our customers are wonderful. … This breaks our hearts.”