On Thomas Street, a fashionista curates and breathes new life into second-hand clothing

It’s about midday on a recent Tuesday, and Ana Cristina da Silva is in a shop in Thomas Street, searching for pieces for a watermelon costume.

She is kneeling to look for trousers on a low shelf, while Lidia Marina Szabó, who runs the shop, folds scarves and organises them into a wooden basket.

“How about this?” Szabó asks, showing Silva a dark green silk scarf with off-white flowers. “Oh, no, the flowers don’t work with the costume.”

“Yes,” Silva agrees.

Carnival is approaching, on 28 February, and Silva is trying to put together a version of this costume she saw on Instagram – she brought the image along. She also came to drop off some clothes at the shop, she says.

“Most of the clothes at Helenese come from donations,” says Szabó, who is from Brazil. The furniture and decor of the new shop mainly come from donations too, she says.

“This is the first place I come to when I need to buy clothes,” says Silva, who is also from Brazil, still looking through the trousers.

Silva likes Szabó’s fashion tips, she says. “I’ve known her work for years, even from before she opened the store,” she says. “Many of my outfits are inspired by what Lidia wears.”

She also believes it’s important to support and encourage Brazilian entrepreneurs, Silva says.

Szabó, who’s from Rio de Janeiro, is the founder of Helenese, which curates second-hand clothing and accessories and provides tailored customer service and fashion advice.

She started Helenese three years ago, running it first from a shed in her backyard and then from a room above Abbey Street. But she only opened this new, larger location on Thomas Street on 10 January, she says.

Szabó has curated and given new life to more than 4,000 clothing items. “I stopped counting when I reached 4,000 last year,” she says.

The name of the business is inspired by her younger sister Lucia Helena, who lived for only 10 months before dying from a hospital infection, she says.

“When I went to search for a name, I looked up her name’s meaning, which signifies someone who has light and shimmers,” Szabó says. So “Helenese”, in Portuguese, means “becoming Helena”, she says.

The idea

In 2019, Szabó opened a tourism agency in Brazil, but the Covid-19 pandemic heavily impacted her new venture.

While watching Szabó’s ups and downs, her friend Paola Felix suggested Szabó curate and sell second-hand clothes instead. “She always dressed well and had a good eye for style,” said Felix, recently.

Felix kept encouraging Szabó every time she posted a new look on Instagram, telling her that was her talent to monetise, she says.

Szabó felt hesitant. But as Felix continued to encourage her, in January 2022 she decided to test the waters. At this point she was living in Dublin.

“I took €110 that I earned from two days of work as a cleaner and decided to go shopping,” Szabó explains.

She bought clothes in her size, reasoning that if the venture didn’t work out, she would at least have a new wardrobe, she says.

Then she set up an Instagram account for the new business, and used her personal account to launch it. She posted photos of outfits, taken at a friend’s house on an iPhone, inspired by Pinterest boards.

“I still remember the number: I had 87 followers on my first sale,” she says. “Three days later, I sold everything.”

Within two weeks, she noticed that her posts were selling the clothes they showed within seconds, she says.

By May, she’d set up a space in a shed in the backyard of the house where she was living, where customers could come by appointment to browse and get advice and buy.

“When I returned from my holidays in Brazil, they asked for the space back, so I took a break,” she says.

After a while, Szabó found the commercial unit on Abbey Street, but balancing that with college and side jobs became too challenging, she says. “I took a break to focus on college.”

Szabó holds a degree in international trade from UNIP, a college in  São Paulo, she says, and is working to finish up a degree in marketing at Independent College in Dublin.

She’s nearly done now, and so has opened this new store on Thomas Street. “I  have only three subjects left to complete in college,” Szabó says.

As her store on Thomas Street is on the second storey, and so doesn’t have a shopfront, Szabó has relied on word-of-mouth and online promotion to attract customers, who are mainly Brazilians, she says.

That’s fine with her though actually, she says. It means she can control how many customers come in. “I want to have children, and with this space, I can bring my children to work when necessary,” she says.

Conscious fashion

“Brrrrrrring,” the intercom rings.

“One second, I’ll be right there!” Szabó says into it, and goes to let the visitors in.

When she comes back, she has a couple with her. The husband sits on the sofa while the wife looks for clothes.

“I saw you at a Helenese gathering and then met you at Pennys,” says Raphaela Morena de Oliveira Luz Costa.

“Oh yeah, that’s true,” replies Silva, who is still in the shop, browsing.

“The Helenese gathering,” says Szabó jokingly.

“This time I want trousers – I have too many blouses,” says Costa. She starts looking at a clothes rail  filled with trousers.

Szabó is in another part of the room, talking to Costa’s husband about a time she did volunteer work in Mozambique.

Costa isn’t sure about her size. She begins to wrap the waist of the trousers around her neck. “This technique works for me,” she says.

She came to Ireland in March 2023, but even before that, she’d seen Szabó on Instagram, so she looked her up when she arrived, she says.

“I have so many clothes from here; I don’t buy from other stores. I only go when I want something very specific that I know I won’t have time to search for in a second-hand store,” she says.

“I like to buy here because of the price and my environmental consciousness about not buying new clothes,” she says. “I also like supporting Brazilian entrepreneurs.”

While Costa tries on trousers, Silva pays for what she has picked out.

She wasn’t able to find what she needed for the watermelon costume, but she found some other things, including trousers and a coat.

“With the discount, it’s €26,” says Szabó.

Szabó advocates for “conscious fashion”, and has built her own wardrobe from second-hand clothes since 2018.

“I always liked clothes,” Szabó says. “My grandmother was a seamstress, and my mom owned a second-hand shop.”

She bought a lot of clothes, but eventually started to feel bad about it. “In 2017, I went a year without buying clothes. When I came back, I only bought second-hand,” she says.

She’s drawn to this approach because of her concerns about the environmental impacts of fast-fashion, and also it’s a way to save money – and there’s another benefit too, she says. “I am always dressed differently from others.”

Szabó puts the clothes Silva has picked out into a bag for her, then gives her a chocolate, and they hug. Szabó walks Silva to the door.

As Costa is about to leave, Szabó adds up the prices of the pieces she’s picked out in a spreadsheet. One t-shirt, two pairs of jeans, one skirt, one “social outfit”, one jacket, and one  bag – for a total of €40, it shows.

She gives Costa a chocolate, and they hug too. Then Szabó walks Costa and her husband to the door.

Taking a big leap

This is the first time that Szabó has no side jobs and can focus only on Helenese. “I am married now,” she says. “It gives me more confidence.”

Her husband, Alex Szabó, helps her with the business and is there to help financially in case she doesn’t meet her business financial goals right away, she says.

“During the first month, Helenese sales covered 70 percent of her expenses,” says Szabó.

She was on holiday for part of the month, so she’s optimistic that next month, Helenese sales will meet their targets.

Now she’s planning to launch a kids’ line. “I noticed how much some of my friends were buying in kids’ clothes stores that they quickly outgrew.”