“Honestly it felt like we were on vacation,” says long-time Ridgefield resident Lisa Cambridge-Mitchell, referring to the new vintage enclave tucked away on Route 7. Drive two minutes north of Nod Hill Brewery and you will find that the former location of Walpole Outdoors is now home to three businesses that perfectly complement each other - Bluebird Consignments, Vixen Hill Vintage, and Ridgefield Vintage & Coffee. After attending one of their “Sip and Shop” events back in February with a group of friends, Cambridge-Mitchell was taken with the relaxed atmosphere. “We had so much fun, wandering from store to store, taking it all in, chatting, shopping, and laughing,” she says. “I loved it.”
Open for less than two years and off the beaten path from Main Street, you would be forgiven for not yet knowing about this gem of a retreat in our own backyard. Take the drive, however, and you’ll find a destination where you can grab a special blend at Ridgefield Vintage & Coffee to sip while looking through their collection. Then you can take your coffee over to Vixen Hill to comb through their astonishing, colorful collection of unique vintage housewares, toys and clothes, then end your tour where it all began - Dana Bucci’s Bluebird Consignments.
You may remember Bucci’s original Ridgefield location on Catoonah Street. After needing to vacate that property, she ended up on Ethan Allen Highway in a lofty barn with rustic old beams and a ceiling painted deep forest green. The shop is filled to the brim with an eclectic collection of furniture, jewelry, lamps, sculptures, paintings, handbags, dining sets, light fixtures, pillows, the occasional kayak, and more. As a huge part of her business is estate sales and online auctions, she loves the idea that an item can spend some time in the shop before it goes to the right person. “That’s my passion,” she says, “selling something back to someone in the community who's going to use it for a couple more decades and who knows - maybe a century.”
The business side of estate sales is a lot of work, though Bucci definitely has the energy for it. She and her team go into a house after the owners have cleared out everything they are taking. Bucci will then meticulously catalogue, research, and price the remaining items, running a sale out of the home for three days. Research itself can take up to a week because “you need to know what you’re selling,” Bucci tells us. After the sale Bucci will often do the cleanup as well, leaving the house completely ready for the new buyers to walk in the front door. “When you’re selling a house that you’ve lived in for 25 years and you’ve raised your family in, it is really hard to let go,” says Bucci. “I don’t think I’ve ever left a home where someone hasn’t hugged me and said, I could never have done this without you. And that is such an amazing feeling I can’t even tell you.”
Not only does Bucci care deeply for her clients, but her enthusiasm is infectious when talking about the meaning passed down through personal objects. “My friend had a really big table and chairs that I didn’t know how I was going to sell,” she tells us. “But I took it because it was hers and she raised her kids on it and they did family projects on it, and family dinners, and art, and homework. One week later a couple came in with three little kids and she fell in love with the table and she bought it and I was like holy cow - one generation was raised on this table and now another one is going to be raised on it.”
And while Bucci loves working with her clients from all over, “I like being in my own community,” she says. “I love having a Ridgefield address. I want people to use me as a resource to sell their things, to lighten their load, to declutter; I feel like I’m helping my community.” She is also in a unique position to, and frequently does, recommend local businesses to consignment customers, donate to the Ridgefield Thrift Shop and support Habitat for Humanity. “So the whole thing is a feel-good in my business.”
In quintessential Ridgefield fashion, Bucci is also the connector that pulled together this assemblage of like-minded business owners starting with a tag sale and a lemonade stand at the home of Vixen Hill’s Amy Goodwin. Knowing Goodwin sold vintage jewelry and antiques with her business “Always in Bloom,” Bucci asked her over lemonade if she wanted to take a look at one of the other buildings on the Ethan Allen Highway Property. From there, Bucci says, “I knew Lana (Taubin) because she comes to my estate sales and I told Lana about Amy, and Lana’s good friends with Kelly (Magner). So I put those three together, which is really fun.”
“It’s been very smooth from the start,” says Goodwin. “I think it’s because the three of us, we all love vintage and we’ve been doing it for years, so it was perfect. And you can tell when you walk in that we each have a different aesthetic. I love florals and flowers, clothing, accessories and jewelry, then Kelly is more traditional antiques and the art and homegoods, and Lana is seasonal celebrations, so she really focuses on the dinnerware and the glassware and the things for entertaining.”
Walking into Vixen Hill is like a party for the eyes. Starting in the farthest corner is an explosion of color where you’ll find vintage toys, jewelry, clothes, and knick knacks. Making your way back to the front is like walking a winding path through a person’s treasures. A desk, a dictionary stand, someone’s varsity jacket, heirloom glassware - it is overwhelmingly fun to take in knowing you could never see it all in one visit. It is beautiful chaos, with so many completely different things in one space that somehow all fit together. Says Goodwin, “I love it so much because I feel like it’s like women supporting women and just working together and sharing our experiences - we work really hard and we work really well together, which is so nice.”
Everyone agreed that it was a great addition to have Charles Moschos join them. After starting as a holiday pop-up, Moschos “caught the bug,” as Bucci puts it, and Ridgefield Vintage & Coffee became a permanent fixture. Moschos has taken the former residence and turned it into a classically curated closet, filled with men's and women's clothing, shoes, hats, and of course, coffee. As the business evolves, he has plans to bring in current lines for some brands that fit the vintage aesthetic, and an expanded collection of his own line. In something of a combination of the two, he also works with a tailor to bring vintage pieces back to life.
On working with the other businesses, he says “It’s a great collective of the three of us - I feel like we really complement each other.” He was confident he could build a clientele here but, he adds, “With them, I felt like we could make it a destination.”
"I felt like we could make it a destination.”
"We work really hard and we work really well together, which is so nice.”