Moncton Vintage Store Owner’s Legacy Lives On
MONCTON – A GoFundMe campaign has been launched in honour of Stephanie Dawn Vautour, owner of Moncton’s SDV Vintage, who passed away in a car accident on August 25 on her 36th birthday.
Stephanie opened SDV Vintage eight years ago with another clothing store, Ok My Dear, and in 2016 moved to its current location at 187 Botsford Street.
“She would be the best at sizing you up and building up your confidence and finding the right piece for the right event – that was her magic,” says Étienne Barry, one of Stephanie’s close friends.
Her best friend Anna Frances Meyer says SDV Vintage was one of the few safe spaces for trans and LGBTQ+ people and marginalized communities in Moncton and rural New Brunswick, and that Stephanie was a pillar of the local queer community.
“Steph lived large and lived loud and proud and uncompromisingly herself and doing that she gave permission to us all to just express ourselves and give our best to the world,” says Meyer.
The GoFundMe campaign will help Stephanie’s parents Sandy and Don with immediate costs, memorial arrangements and maintaining SDV Vintage. Any extra money raised by the campaign will go to help the local queer and drag community.
“It’s going to go, in one way or another, back to helping other people if there’s extra so people want to pay their respects that way,” she said. “We’re all going to make it happen that Steph’s legacy is maintained as much as possible in the community and that people regularly think about her.”
Barry says Stephanie’s mother Sandy, who also worked at SDV Vintage, is figuring out the store’s future, perhaps becoming a collection space or an appointment-based vintage store, but it will remain a safe space for the communities Stephanie loved.
“What’s so nice about Steph’s legacy is that she that touched so many people, and many people left a memento of her time here on the earth in the form of beautiful vintage fashion,” she said. “It’s a special gift that she gave all of us.”