(Continued)
Bernstein, who grew up on New York’s Long Island, has always had a passion for old things. “I just always liked playing with old stuff.” She recalled. “I used to love going to my grandmother’s house in Rhode Island. It was a magical place deep in the woods and her house was full of old things. She had all kinds of antiques, velvet couches & chairs, and a great big closet that was full of beautiful vintage clothes. I would sit in her closet and try on all her clothes for hours.”
Around the age of 16, Bernstein began hoarding old clothes. Not just a few shirts or pants, but racks and racks of dresses, sweaters, coats, and every other piece of clothing imaginable. “I definitely had a problem.” She confessed. “I was hoarding all of these clothes and I really didn’t know why. I was just drawn to them, almost like I was called to steward and protect them.” Before long, she had so many clothes that she started putting them in secret storage units so her family and friends wouldn’t find out that she had them.
After she graduated high school, Bernstein attended the prestigious Sarah Lawrence College, one of the original “Seven Sisters” of women’s colleges where she majored in Adaptive Re-use in Architecture. During her final year of school, she worked on a semester project where she learned all about Detroit. Needless to say, she was fascinated by the city’s old world & industrial history and decided to move there right after she finished school. “I was so intrigued.” She remembers. “The city was so old and rich with architecture and history that I just wanted to go there for a few months and explore all of the wonderful things I learned about.” But when she got there, she completely fell in love with the city and a couple months turned into permanent residence. And of course, her multiple storage units of old clothes followed.
Like most young people fresh out of college, Bernstein needed some sort of job to pay her bills, especially since she was completely on her own in a new city. So she landed a job bar tending at Detroit’s famed Café’ D’Mongos Speakeasy. She
would bar tend in the evening and on weekends, which left her time during the day to start exploring the city’s resale clothing & thrift stores. Soon, she was adding even more clothes to her already overstuffed storage units. One day, after she let one of her close friends see some of her clothes in one of the units, her friend told her that she should open up a store and start selling them. “I couldn’t believe what I saw,” recounted Adelaida Cochrane, an interior decorator and close friend of Bernstein. “She had so many clothes, all neatly separated on garment racks. There was an oriental carpet on the floor, and the clothes were so beautiful and timeless, and they all looked like they were brand new. She had nicer stuff and a better presentation than most clothes stores I had been in. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that she start her own store.” After a little hemming and hawing, Bernstein took her friends advice and soon things were flying off the racks inside of her storage units. Word of mouth spread like wildfire and next thing she new, she had so many people wanting to make appointments to come shop at her units that it started to conflict with her work schedule. So in 2017 Bernstein quit her bar tending job to start selling her vintage clothing full-time, and hence The Velvet Tower was born.
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