Angel Adoree is one of the most fabulous people on the planet.
Known for donning frilly aprons and bright red lipstick while she graciously pours Prosecco into vintage China teacups, Angel is one of the most glamorous hostesses in all of Britain.
I recently caught up with Angel in her East London home, and we sat and had a good girly chat over Earl Grey Cocktails and chocolate BitchBuzz branded cupcakes. (Which were, I have to say, some of the best cupcakes I’ve ever had. Ever.)
As I’m a bit of a Vintage Patisserie fangirl, being in the den of the vintage-lioness herself was a treat. Both her home and her workshop, Angel walked me around room after room of what I can only describe as being Vintage Fantastic.
“And this is my vintage room...”
I peek my head into a room filled wall to wall with vintage dresses, furniture and knick-knacks.
Surely her entire house is “the vintage room”, I think to myself.
“And this is where I do the T-shirts...”
Shelf after shelf of American Apparel shirts sit patiently waiting for Angel to adorn them with a customer’s customized slogan or icon. It’s a workshop and almost a bit of a showcase at the same time.
Tucked in the corner is a small sewing machine table with a laptop on it.
Yes, even Angel’s work desk is fabulous.
“See I used to have these big vintage parties called The Vintage Experience where I would sell vintage clothes. We used to have a row of industrial bins called the bargain bins and everything was £1!
“If something did not sell within six months it used to go in there. Obviously is was a dilemma for some regulars if they should they wait to buy, and many used to see it as a sign if their watched item made it to the bin!!”
Angel Adoree trained as an Image Consultant at the Aston+Hayes Institution, and studied business at college. It’s the combination of her stylish and business background, the friends she keeps and the nature of her family that the creative-yet-business-savvy creative butterfly we know as Angel Adoree came to be.
It seems that all her life Angel has been surrounded by creative, entrepreneurial-minded people. Her father was a jeweler who would make “proper” jewelery in their garage – “Not like the beaded stuff on Etsy!” – and her mother was always making clothes.
“When you don’t have a lot of money, you learn how to make things. We were always making our own things growing up, that’s just how it was. It was out of necessity, but really we enjoyed it.”
But it was working at the Luna and Curious shop on Brick Lane with one of her mates that The T-Shirt Patisserie was born.
“I really wanted to make something.”
Described as a “unique online store offering a range of bespoke products”, at the T-Shirt Patisserie you can “bake” your own gift, whether it be chocolate, t-shirts or coffee mugs and “top” it with customized text, symbols and photographs.
The T-Shirt Patisserie started small, as most things do. Angel was working out of the shop on Brick Lane and making all her orders on her own.
And then Daily Candy happened.
“Kinvara Balfour [the editor of Daily Candy at the time] was like, ‘Are you prepared for what’s going to happen after this goes out?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah of course I am!’” and then after 100 orders in one day I was like, ‘OK. I’m tired. I see what she was talking about’.”
Angel ran the T-Shirt Patisserie all on her own, and it was quickly was getting more and more press.
She stands in her kitchen and flicks through the huge stack of magazines she has, including a copy of The Independent Christmas 2008 Gift Guide, where a box of the T-shirt Patisserie’s bespoke chocolates stand proud on the cover. The whoooole cover. She hands me her bits of press like most people would holiday photos.
“And here we are in InStyle...”
Inspired by the “exquisite packaging of Parisian macaroons”, each and every one of Angel’s T-shirts is always wrapped up like a little treat. (And when I say wrapped up like a little treat, I mean it. I got to watch Angel make and wrap up a couple T-shirts and she is serious about it. And they’re put in boxes reminiscent of the same you would get at Ladurée.)
And, unintentionally sealing her fate, Angel would include a baked treat with every order.
“People would call up and ask where they could get more cakes, and I was like, ‘I don’t do cakes, I do T-Shirts’!”
The cakes became quite a big deal, so much so, that Angel, being the savvy business woman she is, couldn't’t ignore people’s love of cakes.
And this is precisely how Angel’s love of vintage, hosting and cakes morphed into what we know now as The Vintage Patisserie.
While Angel and her friends were always hosting vintage tea parties - much like the ones she used to hold at her flat- at Luna and Curious, after The Vintage Patisserie’s first bit of press in – once again –Daily Candy, things – once again - exploded.
“Since the Daily Candy piece ran, we have been booked up from then until the end of the year. We do lots of of small intimate tea parties for hen dos, or birthday, or even corporate events like we did for Cutler and Gross, Tony and Guy, Oasis, and Covent Garden!”
The Vintage Patisserie has received some incredible press, and as any successful concept or business knows, has also had their fair share of very similar competitors.
But, Angel says it’s all good, as clearly The Vintage Patisserie is kicking butt. “I didn’t invent the teacup. I have time for anyone who is doing their own thing and is putting themselves out there.”
Classy and talented – what’s not to like?
What impressed me the most, sitting and speaking to the perfectly coiffed young, successful woman in front of me, was how genuine she was.
She’s a good hostess because she actually cares whether or not you like your tea or your cake. And she’s a smart business woman for the exact same reasons. Pardon the cliché, but Angel Adoree is seriously one tough cookie.
She lives and breathes what she does, and manages to not complain about how tired or over worked she is all of the time. She has composure and class, and yet has the same beautiful-bad-girl appeal as a coy Dame-like film star from the ‘20s.
Angel simply knows her stuff. She can sense what people want, and what people need. And she does it all while looking fabulous.
As for what’s coming up next for Angel and her team of 1920s tea maids, Angel tells me they’re booked for every weekend until 2010 but that they still have dates available mid-week. Even better? They’ve introduced a Christmas high tea meal which Angel tells me is “scrummy”. (I’m guessing it’s even more than scrummy but that Angel is just being modest.)
In the next couple of weeks the Vintage Patisserie will be putting the Christmas T-Shirt Patisserie site with “lots of festival symbols”, so if you want to customize some Hanukkah cupcakes, keep your eye out!
Angela Adoree is one of BitchBuzz’s favorite women, and we wish both Angel and the Vintage Patisserie and T-Shirt Patisserie the absolute best of luck.
But with Angel’s knowledge of business and fierce red lipstick, we know that luck has had nothing to do with it.