Three 5 Nine King

With countless charity clothing outlets and high-end retro stores, Newtown's King Street is a key destination for Sydney's vintage fashion obsessives. The strip is the perfect location for the Red Cross's most recent retail endeavour – a store that cherrypicks the best vintage garments from citywide donations. This new kid on the vintage fashion block marries op-shop goodwill with beautiful boutique merchandising, and raises Red Cross funds to boot.

Seeing an opportunity in the vast amounts of high quality vintage donated by Red Cross supporters, the charity has opened boutique-style not-for-profit stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. "There are hardcore shoppers that love the challenge of finding gems in op shops, but many shoppers prefer to come into well merchandised stores with great fit-outs," explains Red Cross general merchandise manager Olivia Cozzolino. "We've done the hard work for our customers and only put out really high quality garments."

The King Street boutique, known as Three 5 Nine King, is a sensory treat. Walls are adorned with WWII Red Cross posters; clothes and accessories are arranged by style on racks and inside antique wardrobes. In the place of price tags are swing tickets with hand-drawn illustrations of wartime nurses taken from the Red Cross archives library and shopping is done to a soundtrack of retro classics. While the fit-out is very ‘vintage' in its aesthetic, it also concentrates on the history of the charity. "People love the store because the fit-out is really interesting and the clothes are great and then when they find out it's a Red Cross store they are really impressed," says Cozzolino.

The boutique is also a welcome place for anyone who has donated clothes to op shops only to see them end up down the road at a local vintage store at vastly inflated prices. "The store has now got a bit of a name for itself in the area and so people come in and donate over the counter. People love the idea that they are giving their designer vintage to a store that is going to get the garment's worth and that the money is going directly to the Red Cross."

With prices averaging 25 dollars and all proceeds being channelled straight back into Australian Red Cross initiatives, Three 5 Nine King is well worth a visit. Erin Moy