Main Menu

Vintage and Stuff

Login Form

Vien Vintage and Beyond

The Samadhi Tea room at Vien

vien tea room

Samadhi Tea Room

Our Tea room is now open. With a range of specialist teas in a bijou setting, the Samadhi Tea room is open from Friday to Sunday. Come in and try one of our great teas. Mama Sutra, a local music stylist, has provided personalised music for a relaxing ambience.

English Breakfast

A perfect breakfast tea that really will brighten your morning. Typically full bodied with 'get up and go' flavour that is especially enticing with a dash of milk

Earl Grey

Using only natural flavours and oils there's no aftertaste or overpowering perfume so the high quality, natural taste of the Ceylon tea can be enjoyed too.

Lovers Leap

A truly delightful, medium bodied, flavoursome tea from one of the best tea gardens in Sri Lanka. Grown at high altitude amongst steep hills you can be sure of tasting a wonderful piquant cup with real Ceylon character.

More Zest Herbal

If you're in need of an energy boost that tastes amazing, then More Zest Herbal Tea is for you. Green Mate, known for it's caffeine like compound mateine, is combined with a truly invigorating blend of Lemongrass, Spearmint, Gingseng, Gingko and Nettle. The result? A fantastic herbal tea that gives you that extra zest!

Peppermint

Outstanding peppermint leaves from the best cut of the season that produce a cool and pungent cup of tea bursting with minty flavour. Peppermint tea is a really refreshing drink, totally caffeibne free that tastes just as good hot or cold, especially after meals.

Masala Chai

Chai is a beverage from the Indian subcontinent made by brewing tea with a mixture of aromatic Indian spices and herbs.

Flowering Tea

Experience the magic of watching blossom leaves unfurl and enjoy the beautiful display before pouring a delightful cup of tea. Choose from:

Lotus Peak Flower Burst Flowering Tea

Lotus Peak Flower Burst uses blooms of Amaranth, Hibiscus and Lavender all hand tied with a truly superb wiry leafed green tea grown in one of Yunnan's finest tea gardens. As the blossoms burst open, the resultant tea is clean and delicate with wonderful floral notes and hints of lemon

Jinjicun Mountain Flowering Tea

A wonderful love story surrounds this tea where a thought of forbidden love is captured at the heart of the flower. A refreshing peppermint flavour with floral touches and delicate grassy flavours abound in every sip.

Its vintage darling!

Article from Living South Magazine

Vien is the fashionable creation of Vivienne Bartholomew - who lives in a leafy area of Upper Norwood. "I love living there," she says with a smile. "The gatehouse I live in was built in 1864 and is close to what used to be Beulah Spa - an old haunt of the Royal Family."

Vivienne's passion for the past is clear and this is shown, not just in her choice of home, but in the unusual pieces of clothing that fill her small shop to bursting - from customised bolero jackets to sparkly clutch bags.

Wandering in from the chill, visitors can find something different with the feeling that it was handpicked especially for them.

And handpicked it was. Vivienne has a well-trained eye having ignited her love affair with vintage back in the 60s when she had a stall on the Kings Road: "I've always been interested in vintage and would always try and find the alternatives - whether it be at Carnaby Street or Portobello. I also used to love spending time at a little leather market in Bute Street."

Visitors to Crystal Palace however, will know that they no longer need to go into town for quality vintage - they can simply enjoy a leisurely afternoon browsing the shops in the triangle, stopping off for a coffee along the way. So it comes as no surprise that Vivienne chose the area for her first shop.

"There's an energy here, which for me as a shopkeeper is exciting. And it's great to see young people supporting a small business. Since I opened people from nearby pubs and restaurants have come to support me - it's a great community. They come in and say 'I love your shop and I'll let people know you are here'."

Pass the shop at the weekend and you'll see it's as full of people as it is clothes, and they all have just one thing in common - they want to find something that no one else has got.

Much of Vivienne's stock comes from further afield (across the pond to be exact) so don't be surprised if you find a little pastel prom dress that looks as if it wouldn't be out of place in a classic 1960's American movie.

These clothes arrive at Vien in sealed barrels from a warehouse in California and like Forest Gump's box of chocolates, "you never know what you're gonna get".
"It's like a lucky dip for vintage fashion lovers," says Vivienne. Some items she might customise, others (like a few dresses I spotted) have such a unique feel that they are left as they are for someone to discover.

But what if the fabric is striking but the cut isn't? Vivienne has the solution - she might make one item into several eye-catching accessories or trim an existing skirt with a shock of psychedelic fabric.

"Nothing is wasted," she says, and this could be her motto - it's an ethic she's been sure to pass on to her children and her customers too.

"Vintage is good for society, it teaches people to look after their property and it makes them more conscious of what they buy, which I feel, in turn, makes them a better being. This generation is realising that there is an alternative. They are looking at how things are made - there's an awareness which is really encouraging," she concludes.

So if you'd like to find something unique to wear, take a trip down memory lane - Church Street to be precise - and you might just find gold in the treasure chest.

87 Church Road SE19 2TA; 020 8653 6943

Copywrite Living South reproduced with permission

Vivienne's top tips to vintage

1 Be open to new ideas - choose a few things and always try them on. You might find a beautiful item that needs a little tweak. I can always do that - it's part of the service. 2 To wear vintage, you have to be confident. Your look will be unique so don't be surprised if people come up to you and ask where a particular item is from.
Read more...

Vintage and the High Street

A leading High Street chain comes for inspiration for new designs from Vien Vintage. With the fifties back in vogue, Vien is a wealth of inspiration for designer's looking for new designs based on fifties patterns.The designers use vintage patterns to re-invent the old. The designs are sent overseas and end back on the high street. Sorry we cannot say which high street chain as we have signed the Official Secrets Act.