Treina: Vintage Handbags

“I remember one night I went to like a fried Twinkie party and I walk in and I go, I can’t stay here, my bag is going to smell like fried Twinkies! So we had to leave. I am not kidding. I was like, OH, NO NO WE GOT TO GO.”

TREINA: I started collecting purses when I was like 18. I'm 48 now.

I worked at Bloomies. Cosmetics. I worked 15 years as a retail girl. And that's why I started dressing up. I noticed that the women that dressed up would get a different clientele. My thing was dressing up in my vintage clothes. I've got vintage jewelry. I've got vintage shoes. I've got a collection of vintage coats and brooches, but not as many as I have purses. I would carry a different purse everyday.

I would get the ladies, Oh I love your dress and then they'd come and shop with you because you dressed up. I'd have my brooch on, always wear my hair up. Oh what purse are you wearing today? Is that one of your mom's purses? Cause my mom would go shopping every now and again and find something and just mail me a box. I don’t have to dress up anymore. I'm a yoga teacher now.

ZOE: Did you have regular customers then?

T: Yeah, I had my customers that would come in once a month or once a week or I'd call them and say, Hey this new powder compact is in, would you like to come in and try it? or Let me just send it to your house. You built relationships with your clients. I worked for Estée Lauder for 6 years. I remember when I interviewed I said I want to work for Mac and the lady that interviewed me said, No you're an Estée Lauder girl.

Z: How diverse were her lines at that point?

T: It was pretty diverse when I started working. They knew they had to attract—we would joke about it, but it was serious, her clients were dying. I mean it was women that were her age and we knew we needed to get more clientele and they started coming out with different lines.

The purses are right here. 

Z: You have a whole purse room. 

T: When I was looking at the apartment, what sealed the deal was the closet. I thought, Wow I can put my bags there. The lady that showed me the place said, Oh, that's a pantry for food and I said, Food? What do mean? I don't need that much food.

Z: Would you dress to the purse? Or would the purse be an accent?

T: The purse would be an accent to the outfit. Or some days I would go, What do I want to rock today? 

Z: This is before online, would you ever buy something online?

T: No. I need to hold them, love them, touch ‘em. I can’t just...Oh this is one that was my brother-in-laws mom's. 

Some of them I bought for the clasp…I may need to start carrying my bags again. 

Z: Does your niece like to play in your purses?

T: I don’t let kids play in my purses. NO. 

I looove this one (Gucci bag). One of the makeup artists that I worked with at Estée Lauder, Bergita Andrinni, she one day said, Hey, I have a bag that my mother-in-law gave me back in the early 60s and I don’t like it. I'm gonna bring it in for you. So I open up the bag and I look in and I was like, Bergita, I can't take this. It’s a vintage blue suede Gucci with the double GS. So needless to say, I don’t carry it that often.

I remember one night I went to like a fried Twinkie party and I walk in and I go, I can’t stay here, my bag is going to smell like fried Twinkies! So we had to leave. I am not kidding. I was like, OH, NO NO WE GOT TO GO.

“You just have to know how to speak the language. Move your boobs out of the way. Move your belly out of the way.”

Z: How did you move from doing cosmetics to yoga?

T: Probably 6 or 7 years into cosmetics, I remember standing there thinking, Oh, this can't be it.  Because it was always, at least one lady in the department that was 65+ with the orange lipstick…I just remember thinking, Oh, I don't want...bad knees, bad hips.

When we were growing up, my dad always taught us, work your job and work your passion. So I thought, What's my passion? So I went to a class at the Oakland Y, my first Vinyassa class and I thought, This is it. She announced a teacher training class and I was in it two months later. 

So I took a leap of faith and started Yoga Love three years ago. Every year I'm like, Really we are still here? But it's something I love…something I love doing.

Z: What kind of Yoga is it?

T: It's all kinds: restorative, pre-natal, plus size, Vinyasa, slow flow. 

Z: Plus size?

T: Yeah, yeah. I talked to a lady last week she called, So I'm calling around to ask...do you have plus size yoga? I said, Yeah, Wednesdays at 7:30. She said, Wait, what? I said, Yeah, for like months and months. And she said, Well I'm a size 22, and I said, Ok, and she started crying. She said, I went to a studio they didn’t know what to do with me so they just sort of ignored me and I felt like I shouldn’t be there.

You just have to know how to speak the language. Move your boobs out of the way. Move your belly out of the way. Some teachers are uncomfortable saying those things. Even my teachers will ask, what kind of special thing are you doing in there and I say, I'm just holding space. It’s my fastest growing class at the studio. 

Z: It kind of seems like there's a culture of, if you are "overweight" also you don't fit in exercise class. 

T: And that's where we all need to be! And some people do their cardio. I’m not a cardio girl cause I feel like strong muscles, strong bones, strong mind. 

I remember at the Y when a person with a little bit more meat on her bones would walk in you could tell other people were thinking, What is she doing here? Is she going to be ok? Can she do that pose? Don’t worry about her. Worry about you. It's a trip. We don’t think about it. 

Z: As you became a yoga teacher, did your style change?

T: OHMYGOD YEAH. I don’t wear makeup as much as I used to.

Z: Are those milk glass tea cups?

T: My god-brother gave them to me. He grew up in like, echo park. Parents were crazy wealthy and his mom passed away. He went to prison for like 15 years. He gets out and his Pop was like, Come get her stuff, I'm going to throw it all away. So he gave me like silver trays. Just all kinds of weird stuff like, Oh sister you want these? And I use them at the studio, Yoga Love.

Z: Does everybody in your family collect something?

T: Maybe. My dad collected watches. My mom collects brooches. Good god. She's got a wall of brooches in her closet. They are beautiful. Like she would get into the signed ones. Bower and Weiss were two companies. She wears them all the time and hats. She wears a hat everyday. 

Z: It seems like you guys are style oriented. 

T: We are. We are. We love getting together. My mother’s birthday is Halloween, so we are all going on a cruise and I'm sure we are going to drag out some clothes for that. Like dinner will be over the top every night. I'm already thinking, I've got this gold sequin, gold lame dress that I need to wear...we all wear a purse. And you know one of us will be like, What do you want for that? What do you want to trade for that? It’s always the trade game.  

Z: You stay connected to the family through object and object relationships. 

T: Yeah. Yeah. But not in a hoardy way. We are not hoarders—which is interesting cause you would think as much like my mom has a collection of bells and I mean she's got over 100, like way over 100 and at a certain point, she stopped.

There’s this cartoon…I don’t remember the name of, it was Dotty the dog, Montgomery the Moose and Portia the Porcupine. We all have at least one toy or a stuffed animal. My mom has Dotty (I named my Chihuahua Dotty). My sister has Montgomery the Moose and my little sister has Portia. I have Woolma the Lamb. She'd be a fun tattoo. I've had this since I don’t know when…probably had this over 30 years. 

Here's our thing to, when people die in our family the deal is…like when my great grandmother died—my great grandmother died when she was 99 and she had vases—like vases and vases and the deal was, her children could go in first and get the things they wanted. They could get one or two things for each of their kids and then the grandkids could go in, but it was not a free for all. It was only the kids that were allowed to go in. So the same thing happened when my grandmother died. My mom said, Ok, only her children can go in.

Z: Is your father still alive?

T: No, he passed away like 10 years ago.

My Dad was really like a hot fiery temper, but as he grew older he mellowed out. A Lot. Completely different man. My parents were married for 42 years and I remember I asked my mom, How was that? Cause like, he cheated, he was an alcoholic for a while—and my mom said, You know, I would do it all over again for the last three years. The last three years were the sweetest. All of us were really afraid of him. He was just, if you would ask him something, he would mumble, Papa what did you say? And he would yell. So we all got really good at interpreting the mumbles. He either wanted coffee or a cigarette, so the best thing you could do, you would light a cigarette from the stove and take him a cup of coffee and just go out with both.

When my parents decided to retire, we were in the Bay Area and my mom's mom was still alive and lived in San Bernardino. And eventually my mom said, Sell the house, come and live in Bakersfield. My dad and my grandmother were really good friends towards the end of their lives. He would go over everyday and they would just hangout in the garden and drink coffee. No more cigarettes. He had stopped. I think the doctor said, You keep smoking you're gonna die. Hypertension. And I mean eventually he died because of hypertension but that at least slowed the process down. 

When my siblings had kids, there was no babysitter. There was no asking my mother. She would say, Go ask your father. So he would babysit. And his thing was, Are their diapers clean? Make sure their diapers are clean. He would change the boy babies. He would not change the girl babies. And he would have like gloves on and an apron on and it was almost like he was trying to catch a football. It was so funny. My mother said he didn’t change one diaper when we were kids. Why would he change a diaper? He had a job. That was his thing. He provided. My mom didn’t work. She did later. 

Z: Does your brother take after him?

T: No. My brother is in prison right now. I have one brother and one god brother. But the god brother is a god brother because he was friends with my brother in prison. It’s really like this interesting culture; you know you become friends with one or two people that got your back. So if you don’t have money your brother's got you. You don't have cigarettes to trade; your brother's got you. And I remember when my god brother got out he told my brother; I'll take care of everything. So we just started calling him our god brother, cause he's our brother in god.

I think he's been out maybe three years this month. He's the most interesting most generous guy. When he found out that I was opening the second Yoga Love, he called me, What do you need? I said, I dunno, I might need some cleaning supplies. I think he gave me trash bags in February of 2015. Last week was the first week I've had to buy trash bags.

Z: Is your twin here?

T: She lives in the bay area. What does she collect? She has some, you know we all...we all have some vintage bags—my twin and my mom. Like my mom, when I see her I don’t carry any bags she would ask for. I'm like, Oh I'm gonna be hanging out with her. Cause her thing is, she'll visit you at your house and she'll grab something and she'll leave a post-it note. She hasn't gotten me. She's gotten my twin. I won’t leave her in the house alone. The first time she did it—my sister had a big bottle of Romance by Ralph Lauren the body lotion…so my mom came over with a little bottle and just pumped lotion. 

Z: I think that happens with Mom's where you’re like, Well, you are getting a little weird. 

T: And they don't even care. Whatever. Whatever lady. 

Z: How many siblings do you have then? 

T: I have five sisters and one brother. I'm a twin. We are fraternal. We've got like a cousin sister, we've got an adopted sister so it's like all these folks in there. It’s interesting. 

My great grandmother had a family reunion every New Year's day. We called her, Mambie. She could make cakes. We would all go and it would be all day and it would be so many people that would just circulate in and I remember asking my mother the first time I can remember, How is she our cousin? All these people. I've got a cousin; I don't even know how we are related. I have no idea. If they sat down long enough with my grandmother, it would be a connection cause most of them are from Shreveport, Louisiana. Like, Remember, my mother married your grandmother's cousin... I have one or two double cousins. It's confusing.

Z: What kind of cakes did your Mambie make?

T: Oh, GAWWD. Pound cake was her thing. And Coconut cakes. They would be double-deckers and they would be...they were so good, she would lock them in the pantry, so at desert time, she would go in and get the cakes out. There was no leaving cakes out. No. No. No. No. No. You don't do that. And she would cut them.

At least one day out of the days we are together we all sit in our jams and just eat and play cards. We'll either play Uno or Phase ten. My mom has two peach trees. Two or three of us will go down and make peach jam. And her deal-io is, if you want to take it home, you gotta buy your own jelly jars and you got to pitch in for the sugar and the pectin. I usually bring back a couple of dozen and I sell them. My students are always like, Ok, So…when's the peach jam? We wake up like at 6 'clock in the morning—you should see us. It’s like the funniest thing, cause we go in the trees. We tie our hair up and we get enough for 2-3 batches at a time. My great-grandmother made jam. So we are using my great grandmother's recipe. There are two secret ingredients that we put in. 

Z: Where did she get her recipe?

T: Probably from her mother.

I used to collect apples. Maybe for like 10 years, apples. Most of them are from my mother. She had this apple bell for a very long time. 

{Removes apple bell from cupboard.}

Z: Did you leave a post-it? 

T: I think I took a photo and said, Hey I've got your apple. I love this one. I think my mother gave me most of the apples. So for a while I collected apples. Like my kitchen was APPLES. 

Z: What made that stop?

T: I just was like, I feel like I'm done collecting apples. I'm not putting anymore apple shit in my house.

Treina is a collector of love, vintage purses, coats and red apples.  She lives in Oakland, teachers yoga and enjoys vacationing in Yelapa, Mexico.