Having first worked together as market traders, Dawn Robson and David Stephenson are now drawing on their experience as owners of a quirky new shop. Sarah Foster meets them

STEPPING inside Velvet Elvis, a boutique on Durham’s historic Framwellgate Bridge, it is immediately obvious that it’s not your average kind of shop. For a start, the fixtures and fittings are made from metal and rough wood, giving it a raw, unfinished feel. Perhaps most striking, though, is the atmosphere.

Dawn Robson, sitting at her desk surrounded by the jewellery she makes, flashes a warm, welcoming smile; and David Stephenson, her business partner, says, “Hi. How are you doing?” It’s a bit like wandering into someone’s living room, with Dawn and David like a friendly married couple.

“It is like a marriage – we just don’t have sex,” jokes David, 35. “You’re the calm one, I’m the crazy one,” adds 50-year-old Dawn. “Everybody laughs at us when they come into the shop. They say we really are like a married couple.”

Dawn and David first met as market traders in Durham City Centre, where they had neighbouring stalls every Saturday – Dawn selling jewellery at Silver Dawning and David clothes under the name Vintage at No. 14. They struck up a friendship, finding they had similar approaches to life and a shared love of the market atmosphere, so when the former Thorntons shop became free, Dawn asked David if he would like to join her in taking it over.

The result is Velvet Elvis – a fusion of the two original stalls, selling trendy, casual clothes and Dawn’s distinctive jewellery. It was David who came up with the name.

“It doesn’t mean anything whatsoever,” he admits. “It’s just a cool name. Velvet Elvis is a song by Alex Winston. It was on a Google advert and I just heard it and it stuck in my head.” Yet he is a fan of Elvis Presley. “He was the coolest guy on Earth,” says David, who lives in Tudhoe.

Naturally, Elvis features on the shop’s playlist, and it has its own branded clothes bearing the Velvet Elvis logo, with the word “Velvet” in the singer’s own handwriting and “Elvis” in the style of the backdrop to his 1968 comeback show. David describes the shop as an “urban outfitters” and prides himself on sourcing one-off pieces, including things like oversized shirts which have been adapted or “up-cycled” to bring them up to date.

“There’s lots of Americana in at the moment – things like flannel shirts,” he says. “Eighties knitwear is my biggest seller – the Bill Cosby jumper. They’re awful, but people look good in them if they’re a certain age. Denim is massive - even double denim. Beckham is a fan and if he likes it, it’s all right.”

While 80 per cent of the shop’s stock is menswear, 70 per cent of its customers are women – an anomaly David puts down to the current trend of women wearing men’s clothes. To help convince people that things like patterned jumpers really are in fashion, he attaches photographs of celebrities wearing them to the rails.

The clothes are meant to be edgy but wearable, and, with classics labels like Ralph Lauren and Harris Tweed, David claims they are for everyone. “I think people are dressing young now, no matter what their age is,” he says. “Places like M&S have had to adapt and change. I kind of piggyback on what the high street does and do my version of it, and people come back every other day sometimes because our price point is good, too.”

If David has a flair for spotting trends and translating high fashion into clothes that are wearable and affordable, this is partly thanks to his background as a former marketing director for the flagship Middlesbrough store Psyche. When the recession hit, he was made redundant, prompting him to set up the market stall. It was a hard transition – yet, within weeks, David realised he had found his niche.

“It was so funny,” he reflects. “I became really shy and a little bit embarrassed with the stigma of being a market trader, but, within about two weeks, that went and never came back. I became proud of what I did. It’s nothing to be ashamed of – it’s an honourable trade. You get such good interaction with people on a market. It’s completely different to a normal shop environment.”

Alongside running the shop, both David and Dawn continue to man their stalls, with Dawn’s family filling in at Velvet Elvis. They value the relationships they have established with customers and fellow traders and feel that their background feeds into the shop’s atmosphere.

“I’m a barrow boy but people like it,” laughs David. “They like being treated like a normal person. I think the service is one-off – you don’t get this service at Topshop. We do it because we enjoy it and we like giving people a great shopping experience.”

With a varied past including spells as a beauty therapist and a teacher, Dawn started making jewellery “by accident”, when she bought a precious metal clay fingerprint making kit five years ago. She has a workshop with a bird’s eye view of Durham Cathedral - where she solders silver, copper and brass, and where she runs jewellery-making classes - but, otherwise, she likes to work in the shop window where she can chat to customers. They ask for all kinds of things – and Dawn, who lives in Newton Hall, tries to accommodate them.

“A lady came in and said, ‘You had a necklace yesterday and it’s gone,’ so I made her another one while she sat and had a coffee,” she says. “I will make a little bangle with children while their parents look around.”

Since its opening in December, Velvet Elvis has been what Dawn calls, ‘”an instant success”. A comments book on the counter abounds with compliments, with adjectives like “fabulous” and "fantastic” appearing frequently. The recent addition of an upstairs café has proved an added attraction, serving – partly thanks to Dawn and David’s market connections – fresh, home-made food, and allowing customers to spend longer enjoying the relaxed atmosphere.

For Dawn, Velvet Elvis marks the realisation of a long-held dream of running her own shop and café. She can’t believe her luck. “It’s like heaven,” she says. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

The business was always meant to be something different, and, so far, the indications are that it truly is. “A lady from the tourist board walked past and said this shop would be a magnet for tourists,” says Dawn. “It’s early in the year but even in February half term there was a big boost, with tourists coming from all over. Lots of people who come in say that shops like this are what Durham needs.”

l Velvet Elvis, 2 Framwellgate Bridge, Durham 07702 043095 dawn.robson@talktalk.net

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