It was a simple idea.

“I was sort of like, there’s no series out about my favorite thing to do which is vintage shopping,” says The Vintage Voyageur host Allison Maldonado, whose unscripted series on vintage shopping and culture crept onto the scene in 2016. “And I went, why don’t I make that series?” 

Maldonado started out small: just seven self-edited YouTube episodes featuring visits to her favorite shops around her New York City area. But she quickly realized she had struck a rich vein of content. Viewers flooded her with additional recommendations and wanting more content, she says. For season 2, she moved over to Amazon Prime’s filmmaker hosting site. The platform, which is open to Amazon Prime subscribers and pays content makers per view, allows her to reach an international audience in the UK, Germany, and Japan. (Despite the major distribution channel, Vintage Voyageur is still an indie production with Maldonado's tiny team handling the production schedule, interviews, filming, editing, and publicity.) After a fundraising campaign, Maldonado spent a year planning season 3 with a goal of not just covering vintage stores and shopping, but the vintage community as a whole.

“What you find is the community is very small, everyone knows each other. It’s a wonderful, warm, and inclusive,” she says about the expanded focus of the show. “Even though it’s fashion related, it’s very different than the fashion world.”

That is where Portland comes in. At a vintage convention, Maldonado met mother daughter duo Lisa and Katie Wise of Portland's Dressing Vintage and fell for their elegant style. (See some of their work here in our Caftan America shoot). That chance meeting sealed the deal for Vintage Voyageur to come to Portland. Maldonado shot here in April, and while details about the episode are scarce, you can tune in this fall to see all of season 3.

“Portland is very highly recommended by our viewers, I have always wanted to come here, knowing how eclectic and special this place is. I’m a huge proponent of shopping small business, of shopping sustainable, and that is the way you guys live which is fantastic,” she told us during the local shoot. “That’s really the root of the show. A lot of people think I’m only one person how can I give back, and shopping secondhand is such an easy way. You’re not contributing to fast fashion. You’re not contributing to the water waste, the dye that gets in the ocean. There are so many different factors that shopping secondhand lends itself to.”