Welcome to The Scoop, a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week.

This week’s guest is Ameli Lindgren, owner of Nordic Poetry, which, according to British Vogue, is one of the best vintage stores in the world and, according to my banking app, is where my son’s college tuition is being spent.

Nordic Poetry started as a small vintage market stall in 2007 and evolved into a vintage designer business in 2013, when Ameli secured a small store in London’s Boxpark Shoreditch mall. In 2017, she moved Nordic Poetry to Bethnal Green Road; it’s that store's pink walls you see in the background of all those Instagram Reels featuring Charli XCX, Gabbriette, and all their wedding guests trying on Tom Ford-era Gucci.

Ameli is currently working on Nordic Poetry’s fourth chapter, developing a curated fashion archive. I called her to get the scoop on that and to see if she has anything special prepared for London Fashion Week.

Hi Ameli, what’s the scoop?

I wanted to kind of honor Seán McGirr’s first McQueen show in London with one of the rarest McQueen items in my archive. It’s this mask from Alexander McQueen’s Fall/Winter 1996 Dante collection, designed by Simon Costin.

I believe only seven were made, and only two are circulating in the world right now. One is in LA, and the other is in our archive at Nordic Poetry.

It’s an incredible piece of fashion history.

How did you get your hands on it?

It actually first came up in an auction I lost; then, years later, another one came up at auction. I got that one. I was so sad the first time around when I lost. But you win some, you lose some.

Well, you lost, and then you won. Is the mask for sale at Nordic Poetry?

This is a piece I would never sell, which is why it’s in our archive. It’s a direction I want to take more in the future: I’m working on building up a strong archive with pieces of real historical value. It’s more like creating a museum of fashion, I suppose, and I also want to start renting out to museums. Museums are definitely another market to look into.

We now have nearly 200 pieces in the archive that we won’t sell. We do rent them out, though, to celebrities or stylists for shoots, but those pieces don’t really have a price.

Tell me a little bit about why you set up Nordic Poetry and when.

I started very early. I was brought up in Stockholm in Sweden, and my mum used to resell my clothes at the market. I remember running around to other stalls also run by mums and picking out stuff that I liked. My mum would be like: “No, no, we are here to sell your clothes. Not for you to buy new ones.”

When I moved to London about 20 years ago, I decided to set up a small market stall in Brick Lane. I didn’t do high-end stuff initially, but I sold vintage clothing.

As my business grew and I made some money, I started buying designer clothes, and in 2013, we moved to a store in London’s Boxpark under the banner “Nordic Poetry”. Eventually, in 2017, we moved to the store on Bethnal Green Road, and I started investing in more rare pieces.

Now I’m only really focused on rare designer pieces.

You have a very successful Instagram and lots of celebrity customers, who also appear on your Instagram page. Did that happen by chance, or is there a strategy?

Our Instagram account has always been an extension of our store. And I have always been interested in branding and design — I mean, I like fashion, so it follows. It’s why I painted the walls of the store pink, which makes it very Instagrammable. I think of Nordic Poetry as a brand that is fun and not so stuck-up, and I think that’s what people respond to.

Who is your customer?

We don’t really look at demographics; there isn’t one specific customer. It’s more to do with having fun and dressing people who like to stand out and who don’t want to wear the same stuff everyone else is wearing.

What are your rules for running a successful vintage business today?

I think you need to be creative when selecting your stock, and you can’t just buy based on personal taste. Your stock needs to be sharp; it needs to be nicely visualized; it needs to be relatable, and it also needs to be wearable. It needs to reflect today’s trends, to some extent.

What I’ve tried to do is to have a broad spectrum of designers, mostly from the 1990s. I also have some 1970s, ’80s, and ’00s pieces, but I would say the 1990s are my focus.

And rather than just selecting one or two pieces of, let’s say, Tom Ford’s Gucci, I’ve felt it made more sense to have a hundred pieces from that era. I think it shows that, as a collector, you have knowledge and specialization in a specific brand, and it also looks cleaner on the rails.

How do you work on your stock?

Throughout my years in this industry, I built up a really good network. I do work with vintage dealers, but also dealers who have decided to retire and sell off some of their collections. I still go to markets sometimes, too.

I also work with private individuals. These days, though, I am quite well known, so a lot of people contact me directly.

And I am also lucky: for instance, I once came across a former dealer living in the middle of nowhere in Italy who had been sitting on an incredible amount of Gucci from the Tom Ford era. At first she didn’t want to sell any of it, but we got to talking and exchanged numbers.

Eventually, she changed her mind and contacted me. I ended up going back and forth to Italy about seven times because she had so much incredible stuff.

Are there any designers you gravitate towards?

Tom Ford's Gucci, which is so sleek and sexy, sits really well on the body. Vivienne Westwood.

I love Jean Paul Gaultier as well. What is interesting about Jean Paul Gaultier is that the brand was extremely popular five years ago — it was the thing to buy.

I thought it would take longer for it to come back into fashion, but in the last year or so, it’s already made a comeback. I’ve been selling a lot of it, and I have more in the store too.

So that’s interesting.

I wonder if that’s because the brand has a relatively new creative director, Duran Lantink. Have you noticed people buying more on the vintage side when a brand is popular on the primary market?

Yes, for sure. I think that is very natural. People may not even be aware of it, but if the reviews are good, a brand features more heavily in the shoots and other press coverage. Naturally, it’s front of mind for the customer.

Catch up with last week’s Scoop with Real Housewives stylist Modesto Abreu here.