Voluptuous Vintage in Village Road, Alverstoke, shows The News, Portsmouth, the damage to their shop after a car ended up into the side of the shop.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm Jennifer Darling and I'm the owner of Veluctra's Vintage.
00:04 So tell me what your reaction was like when you heard what happened.
00:08 Well I got a phone call about 11.30 on Saturday night and it was actually from Robbie who is the landlord of the pub next door
00:17 telling me that there had been a terrible accident and there was damage to the shop.
00:21 My first question was, is everybody okay?
00:24 And it took a number of hours to get an answer to that.
00:28 And so we spent quite a lot of time worrying.
00:32 Thankfully it was late at night and the shop was closed so I knew none of my staff were in danger.
00:36 But I was aware that it had impacted the neighbours next door and their elderly so I was concerned for them.
00:42 And I had heard that pedestrians had been hit but again didn't know the details.
00:47 So really that was the primary concern, is everybody okay?
00:51 Tell me what damage has been done to the shop?
00:56 Well there's significant external damage through the brick wall and through the conservation area.
01:03 So the buildings are hundreds of years old and protected I believe.
01:07 So yeah there's extensive damage in the corner.
01:10 We've had some fitting damage to rails and things.
01:14 We haven't done a full assessment yet because obviously our primary concern was making sure everybody was okay and supporting the community.
01:21 And I've driven from Scotland so I've just landed here at 1.30 this morning and seen it for the first time.
01:28 And nothing's been moved other than the engineers who moved things to secure the wall.
01:35 But from what we can see just on our observation it does look like there's some stock damage.
01:42 There is thick layers of brick dust throughout the shop, even in the front of the shop that hasn't been hit.
01:49 I don't know the extent or the value of that at this stage because we're going to have to go through everything piece by piece.
01:57 See what's salvageable, see what's not and take it from there.
02:01 Is there any garments you're particularly concerned about?
02:06 Yes of course.
02:09 Again the importance of stuff is irrelevant when it comes to potential human life and impact and stuff.
02:17 Once we get down to the business element of it, yes of course.
02:20 I have collected, curated, restored and renovated original vintage garments for the best part of 25 years.
02:27 And this collection that we have in the shop and online is extremely personal to me.
02:33 And the garments themselves, some of them are extremely valuable but nearly all of them are rare.
02:39 They're one-off pieces. Some of them are 70, 80, 90, even 100 years old.
02:44 So damage to them where they can't be put in a washing machine or they can't be easily repaired could be really significant.
02:52 So I'm just hoping that none of the original vintage has significant damage and most of it will be salvageable.
02:59 The idea that any of those pieces, it's almost like being a custodian of a piece of history.
03:05 Their story's meant to go on, they're meant to still be enjoyed, they're meant to be loved.
03:09 And the idea that it's going to stop here because of this one incident is hard to think about.
03:16 Tell me what the support and reaction of the local community has been like.
03:21 We have such a good community here in Alverstoke and the village is great.
03:25 The actual village itself is largely independent businesses and all of them, apart from the pub, are female-owned and run.
03:32 Which I think is amazing, like I love that.
03:35 So many of the women have reached out to me already, is there anything we can do, is there anything we can do to help?
03:40 And we've always all been there for each other.
03:43 And the same as all the businesses, we support the schools, we support the church, we're always the Rotary Club, all the events, everything they do, we all participate.
03:53 And it's really nice to have some of that coming back and people saying, "Are you okay? Can we do anything? Can we help?"
03:59 And that's really lovely, it's really lovely.
04:02 And we sent out emails to our customers, we've had hundreds of emails in the last two days of just support, customers offering to come and get a broom and clean up and help us do stuff.
04:14 So I'm just so grateful, I'm so grateful for the community and for our customers and everybody who is kind of behind us.
04:24 It just gives you a bit more optimism that as hard as it is, we'll get through it.
04:29 Obviously this might be a difficult question to answer, but when do you think you might open again?
04:36 Hopefully soon. We don't want to be closed for too long, obviously, because this shop is such a hub for the village.
04:44 But, you know, we have to wait for the wall to be repaired, we have to wait for insurance companies to potentially get involved.
04:50 They might have to assign contractors or builders rather than us finding them, I don't know.
04:55 We might need a refit, we're certainly going to need redecorating.
04:59 It could be some time, but hopefully, hopefully not too long.