Capital at Play Feature
We are so excited and proud to announce that VaVaVooom is featured in a 14 page write up in Capital Play this month! Including an interview with the owner, Lisa, done by Emily Glaser, and photos of the store taken by Anthony Harden.
On Broadway Avenue, in the heart of bustling downtown Asheville, North Carolina, you’ll find VaVaVooom. Its bricked, centuried storefront is much like those around it, with wide, bright windows and a sparkling marquee sign. But this is a store unlike any other in the mountain town. It is, you gradually begin to realize, a uniquity, a business that is an amalgam of industries almost always at odds.
The door swings open with a delicate jangle of bells, and your first step inward reveals the croak of aged wooden floors. Sunlight pours through the windows and filters through thinly layered lace, sweet teddies, and négligées draped over thin hangers, racks of whimsical lingerie in rainbow-hued gradients of pastel, in cherry blossom pink and spearmint green and salty blue. Mannequins pose in the corners, tied tight in warm, velvety corsets and cloaked in silky emerald robes. Shoppers can stroll through the clothing, guide their hands along the soft folds, and imagine a sweet night of champagne and strawberries.
If you continue deeper into the store, another room emerges. It’s not hidden behind heavy curtains or a coquettish sign; the lights aren’t suppressingly dim or revelatory and bright. It’s a room as much a part of the shop as the foyer, but the goods are decidedly different. In this room, you won’t find delicate apparel, but sex products and goods. Shelves upon shelves of body-safe, luxury adult toys and products line the lilac walls. Bottles of lubricants, jewel-toned vibrators, and boxes of sexual curios such as “the Liberator” are stacked on the shelves. The “toy room,” though decidedly different in selection from the rest of the store, is also similar in aesthetic and ambience.
For Lisa Ziemer, a lifelong supporter of all things feminine and feminist, none of this is random or unintentional. Her business is a platform from which she can share her passion and knowledge of the experience of womanhood with an eager, parched community (and, needless to say, a consumer base).