Chyelle, a Vintage Furniture Store and Cafe, Opens in Bushwick

Vintage furniture store and cafe Chyelle has debuted in the Bushwick loft area, offering customers not just a place to pick up some charming thrifted finds, but also to meet friends, work, and test out the furniture.

Owner Chyelle Milgrom is behind the very popular @fbmarketslut Instagram account where she shows off and hawks her Facebook Marketplace finds. Milgrom started the account two years ago and has amassed a following of more than 200,000 people.

“It was a stupid little thing I was doing because there are so many great finds on Facebook Market, and I wanted a way to document them,” she said. “I would send them to my friends and be like, ‘Oh my God, I would suck toes for this but it’s in Connecticut or Massachusetts.’”

She began renting vans for late-night and weekend road trips, sometimes driving 16 hours straight to cram in as many pickups and thrift-store stops as possible. Eventually, her loft apartment filled up with chairs, couches, tables, and shelving units, and she had DIY project after DIY project. She said she’d reached the limit of what she could reasonably keep, especially since she didn’t want to get rid of any furniture in a way that felt wasteful.

“When I buy a piece of furniture, I really connect to it, and I want to keep it for a long time. That’s my intention,” she said. “When you find a sofa you really like, that’s good quality, you’re going to keep it for decades. I really want to live by that.”

But the creative urges kept coming and she debated her next move. She considered interior design, but ultimately took the leap to open her own store, which opened its doors at 199 Cook Street on November 9.

She found and fell for the 1,700-square-foot space in the large commercial building at Cook and White streets, an area now home to a growing cluster of vintage shops and creative makers. Milgrom said neighboring business owners have been especially helpful as she navigated the city’s regulations for opening a small business.

Milgrom runs Chyelle with Minji Um, who oversees the cafe and serves drinks made with Bushwick’s own Loveless Coffee. (Eventually they will add food and are also planning on getting a wine and beer license.) The shop is arranged into five and a half rooms, she said, mostly living room setups with couches, plus an office and dining room display so customers can browse and try out the furniture as if it was in their own home.

Smaller items like glassware and lamps start around $20, while some designer pieces, including a vintage Ikea lamb-leather lounger, can run up to $3,000. Danish walnut dining chairs are $140 each and vintage steel Pollock chairs are $350 each. “I’m trying to keep things as accessible as possible. I really want to encourage people to not default to Amazon,” Milgrom said.

“I hope people come in here and they see an item that really resonates with them…it becomes something that almost represents them in a sense. And when they have it in their home, they’ll keep it forever, and they’ll really cherish it, versus going on Amazon,” she said. “That’s what I hope, to encourage people to really shop with intention, and then to really cherish the items that they do buy.”

Milgrom said people are welcome to come in and fully immerse themselves in the space, and she plans to host private events and functions there as well. When someone makes a purchase, she said, she’ll deliver the pieces freshly cleaned. She can offer delivery within Brooklyn thanks to her parents who helped her buy a van, a huge assist, she said, given the costs of opening a small business, something she said she did “with, like, pretty much pocket change.”

Both Milgrom and Um are still working 9 to 5 jobs remotely, Milgrom as a UI/UX designer, and both have to be in the office on Tuesdays, when they close Chyelle. The store is open Wednesday through Monday, from 9 a.m to 8 p.m.

Another big vintage retailer, Big Reuse, will be opening a subway stop away from Chyelle at 378 Troutman Street in the coming weeks, selling books, dishes, glasses, and other homewares.

[Photos by Anna Bradley-Smith]

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