Taylor Young, the owner of Retrograde Dept., a high-end streetwear shop in Birmingham, Alabama, spoke with The Birmingham Times about how she learned all about the clothing business at a young age. And it all started in the shopping plaza previously owned by her family.
“My grandmother had a restaurant in the first building at the very beginning of the plaza and my uncle had a clothing store called The Spot,” Young said.
Her uncle received a lot of business because he was “known in the city,” and Young obtained a lot of knowledge about business and fashion from him before he passed away in 2011.
“He knew I had it,” she said. “I was going to take over the clothing store when I graduated high school. He was going to give it to me.”
Young’s passion for fashion and business grew with her looking up to prominent music business figures from the ’90s.
“I used to see people like Lisa’ Left Eye’ Lopes and Aaliyah on 106 and Park, and their clothes were baggy therefore, I used to wear my brother’s clothes for the same look.”
Young began going after her dreams of owning her own clothing business after graduating from Hoover High School in 2013. She used the $5,000 savings she attained from working at a fast-food restaurant to launch her website, Stay Taylor Made.”
The ambitious entrepreneur started by selling shirts and hats with her logo. Young attended Jefferson State Community College for two years while operating her business. She then attended Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama, before leaving to focus on her business.
Studying a store owner while working as a store manager in Fairfield, the vicenarian realized she knew how to run her business successfully. In October 2019, she owned up her store, Shop Tay Way, which sold streetwear brands like Chrome Harts and Nike. But like others, Young didn’t see the pandemic coming and said that she wouldn’t have opened had she known.
“If I would have known the pandemic was coming just months after opening my store, I wouldn’t have opened it,” she admitted. “I only had four months with a clean slate. I didn’t know how I was going to survive, but I ended up making changes inside of the store.”
A few months ago, the Alabama businesswoman discovered that a spot in the plaza was opened for her to rent out to open her store. After repeatedly asking one of her uncles to let her rent the space, she finally got her wish and opened her store, changing the name to Retrograde Dept. because she wanted to “rebrand.”
Retrograde Dept. sells brands like Chrome Hearts, Essentials, The Gallery Department, and more. When Young buys the clothes she sells, she doesn’t buy items more than once since “no one likes to look the same.”
