Massey, in her 111 Court St. shop. Noir Vintage & Company closes its brick-and-mortar on Dec. 30. Lucy Gellman Photos.
It’s not goodbye. It’s the beginning of another chapter.
That news came from fashionista Evelyn Massey earlier this week, as she announced her decision to close Noir Vintage & Company’s brick-and-mortar location at the end of this month. In the past two and a half years, the 111 Court St. shop has become a portal to the past and beloved pilgrimage site in downtown New Haven, where a patron can step inside and stay among racks of clothes, stately old furniture, and items of vintage décor for hours.
As she prepares to pack up the shop, she’s reflecting on what the last three years have meant to her. She has made it very clear that this is not the end of Noir Vintage: it is just the end of the downtown store. The last day she’ll be open for business is December 30.
“It is a big decision, but it’s not a bad decision,” she said in an interview Wednesday afternoon, as the smells of sandalwood and cypress drifted through the store. “I put all of my love and heart into this place … [and] I decided to move on because there are other things that I want to do. There are so many things I want to do.”
It is the latest chapter in a life that is all about sustainability, style, and storytelling. Born in Virginia but raised primarily in New Haven, Massey first fell in love with vintage clothes as a teenager, hunting for treasures in secondhand stores long before thrifting was cool (“My girlfriends would go to the mall and I would go to Goodwill,” she remembered in an interview in 2022). At the time, owning a small business wasn’t even a glimmer in her mind—she just knew that she loved old clothes, and that most items came with a story to tell.
After high school, she studied cosmetology and then interior design, building a life around style. For years, she worked as a makeup artist between New Haven, Bridgeport, Washington, D.C. and New York, buzzing between locations as she collaborated with industry names like Mac and Stila Cosmetics. She became a mother twice over, doting on her children as she built up her portfolio, and began to collaborate with fellow New Haven beloveds like the late Sharon Clemons, then still based in Bridgeport.
It has not always been an easy or straightforward journey, she's quick to say. In 2001, Massey lost her son Pedro when he was still very young, just on the cusp of adulthood. As she navigated a deep well of grief, she kept connecting with her community, founding a skincare brand called Ordep in his memory.
“I watched Evelyn keep going,” remembered Erik Clemons, president and CEO of ConnCAT and founding CEO of ConnCORP. Clemons was close with Pedro—the two loved to share books—and knew Massey through his wife, Sharon. “She is a creative force, always reimagining and recreating herself, and always connected to the community.”
At some point, Massey also began curating a collection of women’s garments from the 1930s to the early 2000s (she now also carries vintage men's clothes, which she said are much harder to find). Each piece that she found had a story: a puff-sleeved, floor length Oscar De La Renta wedding dress from the 1980s; snazzy black-and-white spectators from the Swiss shoe brand Bally; a red wicker purse, sold decades ago across a shop counter in Florence, Italy.
There were polka-dotted linen blouses and tidy off-white boxes from the old Edward Malley Co. that conjured the old Chapel Street Mall. Her delight was (and is) in the details: delicate blue-and-white piping with gold buttons on a suit jacket, gem-colored suede cowboy boots, hand-done embroidery on a violet cotton dress from Oaxaca.
By 2018, Massey was doing pop-ups, finding her collection through estate sales, donations, and second-hand stores (“The hunt is what I thrive off!” she said with a laugh. “I’ve climbed bins before!”). Then when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, forcing people into their homes, she brought her collection online, selling through virtual pop-up sales.
“I've always applauded not only her creativity and ingenuity but also her courage,” Erik Clemons said, adding that it was thrilling to watch her grow in the first class of an entrepreneurship academy from ConnCORP and Quinnipiac University in 2022-23. “We are in a moment of a need for courage.”
As pandemic restrictions eased, she flourished at pop-ups across the city and the region. People knew the name Noir Vintage and they loved Massey, who would spend time searching for an outfit until it was just right. By one such event, a holiday bazaar at ConnCORP in 2022, she had a steady stream of customers, who often greeted her with a hug and a delighted squeal.
So maybe it made sense that a brick-and-mortar space would be her next step. After the exposed brick walls came to her in a dream, flitting across some corner of her brain, she realized that “it was on my bucket list” to open a store, she said. At the time, she was 60, and knew that opening a small business could be a gamble. She wanted to try it out anyway.
When she got the keys to the space in 2023, she did a rehab “from bottom to top,” revitalizing the former home of a hair salon to make space for racks of clothing, pieces of vintage furniture, and artfully curated décor, as well as a collection of artwork that includes old black-and-white photos, playbills, album artwork and movie posters from a bygone era.
She added rich, marbled red accents to the walls, making the building pop as a person walked in. She assembled what fashionista Todd Lyon recently called “altars”—sartorial vignettes soaked in memory, from a silk-wrapped high heel or beaded, glimmering bracelet to a fan spread out across a table.
“This thing was turned from a diamond in the rough to what it is now,” Massey said. “My intention was to make this place an experience of just walking in, feeling at home. It almost reminded you of a museum, a boudoir, a Harlem Renaissance [salon]—all of those things into one.”
That vision has come to fruition several times over, in ways Massey couldn’t have imagined when she first opened her doors. In three years, she has completed entrepreneurship trainings with both ConnCORP/Quinnipiac and the City of New Haven, as part of its DNA of an Entrepreneur program. She has won an arts award for her ability to build community, and caught the eye of film producers and costume designers scouting for shows.
She created a signature Noir Vintage scent, and made the store into a beloved third space, with occasional poetry readings, DJ sets, and a soundtrack that, on any given day, is good enough to sink into and listen to for a good long while. Months after opening, she welcomed the public art collaborative Bright Spaces into the shop, delighted as members added a mural dedicated to music along one of the back walls.
Although the store is tucked away from the daily foot traffic of Orange Street—more than she would like, she said—Massey has also built a steady customer base, with many devoted fans who return in search of the perfect button-down, a funky 1950s leather bomber jacket, or a statement piece of jewelry that they’ll keep for the rest of their lives. Some just come for conversation, and sometimes leave with an unexpected hat or thick wool scarf in hand. Most recently, she’s collaborated with Kultjah on a series of wraps that are only available at the store.
Last September, artist Eric Jimenez (a.k.a. DJ Concón) became one of those faithful customers, turned on to the shop while searching for a hat for a friend’s birthday. No sooner had he walked in, referred by another vintage store, that he started talking with Massey about her life and work.
It was just short of 5 p.m., he remembered, and still Massey was eager to help out. When he left, Jimenez promised that he’d return—and he did, many times over. Sometimes, he said, he’d just be walking through downtown, and swing by the shop to talk about New Haven, about gentrification and luxury housing going up downtown, and about life and family dynamics.
Earlier this year, he found a perfect, sunshine-yellow tuxedo shirt at the store that seemed to glow when he put it on. It felt like the perfect nod to his dad, who played in salsa bands in the 1980s. In June, he did a DJ set in the space, lending music to a Saturday afternoon as people shopped.
“She’s just such a welcoming and inviting person,” Jimenez said in a phone call Thursday evening, remembering the delight with which Massey showed off her grandfather’s navy jacket, steeped in history and beloved in her tender hands. Since that time, she’s helped Jimenez sculpt his own style. “Other stores, they have clothes. She has, like, art pieces … Her eye really pushed my style and made me more confident.”
For people of color like himself, he added, “romanticizing the past isn't always good.” And yet, “there are moments and pockets of joy, moments of pride, moments of togetherness that come through the clothes … Evelyn just embodies that.”
It’s easy to see why. Walking in, a patron feels like they’ve been transported back in time. On the brick walls, vintage mirrors, and selections of dresses, hats and furniture look back in every direction, including a few items that Massey can’t bear to part with (Wednesday, a long, white silk gown was one of them). In the center of the room, there’s a cordoned-off settee that once belonged to Clemons, a stylist who was Massey’s close friend and collaborator for four decades. When it's with her, she can feel her dear friend's warm, generous spirit in the room.
Further back, just feet from a beaded curtain, there’s a portrait of Massey’s grandmother, Mallie Hardy, close to a rack of cloche and pillbox hats and dainty fascinators. There are words dedicated to her grandmother, Virginia, across from open playbills from early performances of Porgy & Bess. Beyond the curtain, there are racks of clothes—acid-washed denim jackets, jeans with tiny waistlines and generous elastic, half a dozen warm tweed blazers, a hot pink, quilted jumpsuit that is still waiting for the right owner. For those in search of décor, she’s got that too, from gold and ceramic candlestick holders, old books, and quaint porcelain figurines and to napkin rings with pressed flowers suspended inside.
“The customers” have been the most amazing part of the journey, she said. “I’ve met so many wonderful, wonderful people, so many connections, oh my goodness. So many connections. And just the collection … what I sell made a difference that kept me out of competition with the others.”
But Massey has also put other goals on the back burner to keep the store running (she is the only employee, meaning that is her own fashion scout, stylist, buyer, salesperson, marketing director, bookkeeper, partnership manager and event coordinator). For years, she has wanted to travel more, including to Montreal and Bali. She wants to go on trips dedicated to learning about craftwork and scouting specific vintage items, like textiles and furniture.
She’s received offers for on-set styling in film and stage productions, which she can’t take while she’s running the store. She wants to put out a vintage styling catalogue, with information on “vintage clothes and eras and things like that,” she said. She wants to write a memoir. And she’s interested in getting back to her love for interior design, for which she attended Paier College of Art several years ago.
So when she realized that her lease would be up in January of next year, she made a decision not to renew it. No one is forcing her to move, she added, although she believes that the city could do more to support and amplify small business owners like herself, and especially Black women in the Ninth Square and downtown. Ultimately though, she said, the move is for her.
“Noir Vintage & Company will always be Noir Vintage & Company,” she said, adding that there will soon be a “brand spanking new” website where potential customers can still peruse the collection. “We’re just dissolving the brick and mortar. I want to work more with the community, I do, because I haven’t done that enough. There are so many things I want to do, and this will allow me to do those things.”
As news of the store's brick-and-mortar's closure spread on social media, friends and fans both mourned its loss, and voiced their support for Massey’s next chapter as a stylist, creative, and Black business owner. Markeshia Ricks, who was one of Massey’s first in-person customers, praised her unique eye and sense of vision, which has helped her find pieces from a hot pink sundress to a wooly blue sweater that is one of the most cherished items in her closet.
Top: Ricks on day one of the store's existence on Court Street. Lucy Gellman File Photo. Bottom: One of the "altars" that Massey has created.
“I’m really happy that she pushed through to a brick and mortar, and she created such a lovely space,” Ricks said in a phone call Thursday night. “It’s [the shop closing] very bittersweet … sweet because of the beauty that she created and the loveliness that she brought to that part of the city and her unique eye. She has such a talent for picking things out and an incredible eye for pieces that are unique and well cared for.”
“If I could have a personal buyer,” she added with a smile that was audible in her voice, “I would turn my wallet over to her.”
Designer Tea Montgomery, a Westvillian who has known, loved and collaborated with Massey for years, echoed that sense of appreciation.
“I was very proud of her for scaling her business beyond the mobile shop and opening up downtown,” he said in a text exchange Thursday night. “Going in there was always peaceful and inspirational. It’s almost like a museum, seeing the pieces that she finds. Evelyn’s taste in style is amazing, and she works with ultimate professionalism. Operates from love. I recommended clients to her all the time.”
Montgomery added that it was always “beautiful to see how people transformed the space” at events that Massey hosted. For him, that ability to blend style and storytelling—and a belief in more sustainable fashion practices through durable secondhand clothing, very little of which is made from synthetic materials— is what it’s all about. In an interview Wednesday, Massey agreed, noting the environmental harm of fast fashion, and the increasing risks it poses to human health.
“It is important to support because so much of what inspires the world starts at the ground level, with creatives,” Montgomery said. “There is so much good and influential business being done by creative entrepreneurs, and not necessarily the resources or reach that the work deserves.”
Massey, meanwhile, said that her overwhelming emotion is gratitude. Through December 30, she is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a $5 and $10 rack and fill-a-bag sale this Saturday, December 6. On Christmas Eve, she’s considering a goodbye toast to the space on Christmas Eve.
“I think in times of our lives, God will show us different talents, and some things are just for a season,” she said. “To say that for three years, this place was up, it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing.”