Vintage lovers rejoice! Bowral’s much-loved and iconic vintage market Dirty Janes is opening a new location right here in the Colour City.

The new Orange location, in the former PCYC building in Byng Street, is about to undergo renovations and is due to open early 2024. December/January. Not just a retail store, Dirty Janes Orange will be a complete indoor market with room for almost 100 individual stallholders selling everything from homewares and furniture to clothes and collectables.

“We bring in people who do fabulous vintage wares, whether they’re artisans or they make furniture or they have a fabulous collection they want to sell,” says Jane Crowley, who founded Dirty Janes along with her father Athol Salter. “Really anything that is beautiful homewares and has a vintage vibe about it, I’m interested in bringing them on board.” 

Dirty Janes was created to give small business owners and artisans a way to have a retail presence without being bogged down in the day-to-day running of the business.

“If they’re an artist or make fabulous vintage clothing, they don’t want to sit behind a shop counter five days a week. They want to be able to do what they’re really good at, which is making vintage clothing or painting or whatever it might be. That’s where Dirty Janes comes in,” explains Jane.

“We take care of all of the business aspects, the selling and the publicity. We’ll negotiate with customers and ship things across the country, and that allows them just to really concentrate on the artistic side of their businesses.”

In the 15 years since the original Bowral store opened, Dirty Janes has become a much-loved destination for lovers of vintage, drawing in people from all over the country. A drawcard is being open seven days a week, and having its own coffee shop. They also do wine-meets-fashion events. Crowley says they like to embed themselves within a creative community, and is excited about doing that in Orange. 

“People often describe our Bowral store as their happy place. Because they can wander around and experience all of this creativity around them and they get completely inspired, which is fabulous,” says Jane, who personally interviews potential stallholders and curates the mix of vendors and products you will find in Dirty Janes.

“My job, putting a Dirty Janes together, is that when a customer walks in they have to experience surprise and delight. They have to walk from space to space going, ‘Wow, look at that!’ ‘That was completely unexpected!’

“There’s got to be this feeling of ‘Wow’ and that it changes almost daily with new stock coming in, so I’ve just gotta keep going back.”

Orange will be the third Dirty Janes location when it opens this summer; a second location opened in Canberra in 2020. “Orange ticks all the boxes and it’s a lovely place.”

As the opening date for Orange gets closer Jane has already been meeting with potential stallholders from Orange and all over the Central West.

“I’ve been eyeing-off Orange for quite a while and we’re really excited to come up there,” says Jane, who is confident Dirty Janes Orange will have something for virtually anyone who walks in their door.

“Whether they collect old LP records, or they want a vintage skirt, or they want a new dining table, we really try to make sure that everything is available!”