Building a Vintage Buisness in Brittany

Vintage clothes shop owner Skye McDonald tells  about building her business as a teen in Brittany…

The French Brit Vintage shop in the corner of the town square in Morlaix, Finistère, is an unexpected burst of colour. Its British-born owner, Skye McDonald, is equally surprising. Aged 26, she has already been running the shop for eight years. “I grew up in Newquay,” she explains, “then, in December 2007, my parents decided to move to Huelgoat in central Brittany.

“There were lots of British families living there at the time, so the local primary school had a few other English-speaking children. Even back then, aged eight, I
can remember the class talking about what jobs they wanted to do, and I said I wanted to be a fashion designer.” Three years later, the family moved to the coastal town of Plestin-les-Grèves, 45 minutes east of Roscoff, but Skye’s plans didn’t change. At 16, she started a ‘CAP Mode’ fashion course in nearby St-Brieuc. However, she decided not to pursue it as the course turned out not to be what she expected.

“One of the downsides of the French school system is that there’s zero flexibility for anyone like me who has symptoms of ADHD or dyslexia,” says Skye. “I couldn’t understand why even though I’d chosen to do a vocational course, only 14 of my 31 teaching hours were actually about fashion and the rest was still really academic, including French, English, science and maths. You can’t just choose to focus on the subject you want to do and for me the balance wasn’t right.”

In August 2017, aged 18, Skye started her own online business via Etsy, selling jewellery, handbags, scarves and clothes. It was a much better fit than her college course, but she found it hard working on her own, so decided to open a physical shop, choosing Morlaix for its proximity to Roscoff and direct train links to Paris.

Seven months later, Skye found a property in Place des Jacobins, Morlaix, which she was able to buy thanks to a loan from a family member, paying it back through monthly instalments with interest. She took a one-week business course and registered as a self-employed micro-entreprise business, renovated the property with help from her parents, and finally opened French Brit Vintage in 2019.

“At first, the shop was partly a brocante with clothes on the ground floor and artwork for sale upstairs, painted by my mum, the artist Melanie McDonald,” explains Skye, “but after about a year, I realised that we really needed to focus on clothing and accessories. To start with, 40% of my sales were clothes and the rest was artwork and brocante items, but now my sales are 90% clothes.

“I was still living with my parents, which really helped me to save money. The shop finally broke even after three years. As well as the shop in Morlaix, I have been listing items on Vinted since July 2021, and I still sold on Etsy, but a big percentage of my sales was to the US and I had to stop when Trump changed the tariffs in 2025. It’s all part of adapting the business.”

Opening a shop requires a lot of stock upfront, and when Skye started out, she was helped by the generosity of family and friends, donating items from various decades and even different countries including Thailand.

“My dad gave me a loan to start with and whatever money I made from a sale went straight back into the business to buy more stock,” explains Skye. “Now, I source items on Vinted, from local vide-greniers, which are similar to car-boot sales, and through charity shops both in France and the UK. I have been known to buy an extra suitcase while on a trip to England just to bring back all the stock I’ve found!”

Life changed in 2022 when Skye realised she was pregnant, which presented a practical challenge for her business, but also tested her friendships. “The stigma around being a single mum is still very strong here, especially among men,” says Skye, “and a lot of my friends didn’t understand why I’d choose to be a mum at 23. I was told that I was too immature, that having a child in this economy was selfish, even that I should think about World War Three.

“It hurt at the time, but this is how I learned who my real friends were. I guess it’s not surprising, but the people who judged me for choosing to keep my baby were the same ones who used to make me feel bad if I talked about my business. I’ve kept my true friends and through the shop I’ve met new people so it turns out I was just in the wrong crowd.”

Skye faced a difficult pregnancy and became very ill, but as a micro-entreprise, her potential maternity pay would have been very low, so it made more sense to continue the online businesses rather than take maternity leave. Her dad, Rod, stepped in to look after the shop for nearly two years and Skye’s little boy, Karadoc, was born in December 2022.

After being a single mum for a couple of years, in 2024 Skye met her French boyfriend, Jean, who runs his own business in Morlaix. “I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have the shop without my family’s support,” says Skye. “Mum helped me to look for business premises in the first place and supplied her artwork for sale in the shop, while dad helped me with all the legal stuff so I understood what I was signing at 18. He still helps me with the paperwork, he’s basically like an accountant for me.

“I’m sure if I’d gone to a bank for a mortgage, they would have said no because, based on my Etsy takings, I wasn’t making enough in 2019 or 2020 to pay them back monthly – so the loan from a family member is what made it possible for me to buy the property.

“Even now, my parents still help with picking up Karadoc after school or minding the shop and I don’t make enough money to pay an employee. I’m very lucky and I’m very appreciative of the help I’ve had from those around me.” Having moved out of her parents’ house and into her own studio flat in 2024, Skye now has a home life with Karadoc and Jean, a good base of regular, loyal clients and a group of genuine friends.

“For a long time, I felt like I never truly fitted in,” she says. “During my teens I struggled with not feeling accepted, I’d always had this sense of being too English for the French, and too French for the English. When you’re 18, most people your age are focused on parties, drinking, drugs, learning to drive, travelling or going to uni, so opening my own shop when I was so young seemed to reinforce those feelings of being different. In the end, I learned to just not talk about it. When I began my business, it gave me something of my own to focus on, something I could be passionate about. I wasn’t put in a box anymore, I could do it my way and make my own rules doing something that I enjoyed.

“The majority of the friends I have now are bilingual, multicultural, self-employed or creative and/or parents. These days, when people ask me about my work, it comes from genuine curiosity and their reaction is a lot more positive.” Skye remembers back to her school days. “Just before our exams, one of my teachers went around the class asking each of us what our plans were after our CAP fashion course. Some wanted to go into commerce, others to take a Fashion Bac Pro or something completely different but most wanted to carry on studying. When it was my turn, I told her my plan of selling secondhand clothes online and her reply was, ‘I don’t think you’ll make much of a living doing that’. I’m really glad that I proved her wrong!”

Now her business has been open for six years, Skye is focused on growing her sales and is looking for a little home with a garden for herself, Karadoc and Jean.
“In France children can start going to school at age start going to school at age three,” she says, “so my son has just started primary school nearby. Jean runs his own café in Morlaix, with plans to open another business, so I can’t see us moving anywhere else in the near future. I love what I do. I appreciate the flexibility of it and I’m truly grateful to be in this situation.”

Find Skye in Morlaix or on Instagram @FrenchBritVintage

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