Speak Vintage owner Casandra Marie is holding up a 1980s-era shaggy white Mongolian fur coat to the camera during a Zoom meeting. “How fabulous is this?” she asks. Even viewed through a screen, the jacket makes a statement. It’ll make an even bigger one if you see it in person at her new live-work studio in Falls Church, where she began accepting private appointments earlier this year, or on one of the musicians she’ll be photographing within the studio’s walls.
You see, Marie isn’t simply a retail entrepreneur with a nostalgist’s eye. The Fort Belvoir native is also a burgeoning music photographer. The self-taught talent got her start snapping backstage pics at Pearl Street Warehouse—a free side gig while also working as a server at the venue.
“I approached [one of the co-owners], and I said, ‘I’m going to start shooting the musicians because nobody else is doing it.’ And he didn’t say no.” In January 2020, Marie captured an iconic black-and-white portrait of ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons—using a professional camera she’d borrowed from a friend.
“It made me a rock ’n’ roll photographer,” she says. She began shooting almost every night as the venue’s official resident photographer. And then COVID hit. Rather than slow down, she tried to build momentum; she reached out to musicians she knew and offered to photograph them at their homes (while masked up, of course). She began collaborating with DC-based band Be Well, landed a few acts in Nashville and then decided it was time to truly foster her skill. She once again approached the Pearl Street folks, this time about partnering with her—and that helped her secure her ultimate work-from-home locale in NoVA. Her new space is a hybrid studio and shop, open by appointment only.
It’s an example of Marie’s DIY mentality. The Virginia Commonwealth University grad (she has a bachelor’s in mass communications) spent eight years with clothing brand Bebe, working at various regional stores, including at Tysons Corner as general manager and district manager in training for the Virginia market. But she decided to trade the corporate world for self-made success, channeling her longtime love of old fashion into a brand—and her label, Speak Vintage, was born. In 2012, she started selling on the streets of DC, “literally popping up on corners,” she says. “I got this cult following because my stuff is weird, and DC is not.” She started meeting photographers and attending shoots as the stylist, which evolved into creative directing. Her label was in DC fashion shows; she did pop-ups, ran a showroom off 14th Street for a few years and grew her online presence.
Today, there are about 400 pieces in her Etsy boutique. But that barely scratches the surface of the goods, largely amassed from estate sales in Arlington and Mount Vernon (a gold mine, she says). She has about 1,000 units of jewelry, apparel, shoes and accessories (from the ’30s to the ’80s, with a large focus on midcentury) she hopes to sell—like a 1960s-era blue-velvet beehive topper, a floral silk off-the-shoulder dress from the 1950s and menswear.
Visit her studio, and you’ll experience the pieces in person—not to mention the heritage vases, tables, art and more from her personal collection—bringing a tangible, human connection that is so important when shopping for antique wares.
“I can really nurture it and give it time, where before I was just jumping around and doing A, B, C and D,” she says. Marie will also be able to outfit the artists she shoots. “The only thing better than a rock star is a well-dressed one,” she says. “My vintage and the musicians—it’s a vision that’s finally coming together.”// etsy.com/shop/speakvintagedc; casandramarie.com
This story originally ran in our March issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.
