The Dish #2: Alexia Ioannou

The founder and curator of Nou on flow states, gatekeeping, and prioritizing pride over profit.

The Dish is a monthly interview series where I speak to people about the ups and downs of building a life and career that you love. This month, I spoke with Alexia Ioannou, the founder and curator of Nou.

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If you’ve been following me here or on Instagram for longer than, say, the last 72 hours, you’ve probably noticed I’m a bit of a vintage clothes horse. I first stumbled across Nou through A Current Affair, the community that runs one of my favorite vintage markets. They’d highlighted Nou as a first-time seller during their most recent Los Angeles show, and I was instantly dazzled by the collection of Y2K shoes and slinky slips that would put Carrie Bradshaw’s closet to shame.

But I also loved the intentionality behind the curation of the pieces for sale — something that I could tell founder Alexia Ioannou was incredibly passionate about. She is an obviously stylish woman in her own right, but there is a level of apparent depth and care to the way she selects the pieces she wears and sells. It’s like witnessing someone cracking into the thing they’re best at and enjoying every second they get to do it. (She also just launched a Substack where she has some of the best guides to vintage shopping I’ve ever read.)

Alexia began her career in corporate fashion — first at Barney’s and then at a denim company in Los Angeles — before starting a jewelry company that would eventually grow into the vintage shop Nou. But figuring out who you are while figuring out what you want to do is not always easy to do in tandem. (Something I myself have experienced more than I’d like to admit.) “I think without the culmination of all of that, the journey of self-discovery, I wouldn’t have found this career that I’m passionate about,” she says.

Ahead, we dig into the self-discovery that leads to career contentment, our disdain for vintage gatekeepers, and tapping into one’s flow state.

Maria: So you went from working at some pretty large fashion companies to starting your own thing. What was the first thing that made you think, “I don’t want to work for other people anymore?”

Alexia: I felt like I was resenting something I loved because I’d spent so much time in a corporate structure in fashion. So I started doing marketing with an interior designer, and that’s when things really started to open up for me. I found my love for fashion again as an individual and started putting more effort into my personal taste and looks again.

I was also going through a lot personally, including a really tumultuous long-distance relationship. I posted a TikTok of just my shoes — literally just my shoes, not my face — walking with a pair of Levi’s and these vintage Dior mules, and it went viral. Crazy viral. And people were commenting, “I need these shoes! Where do I get these shoes?!” These were some super-rare, impossible-to-find vintage mules, but I realized there was clearly a gap in this market — a market I personally love. So I decided to do a drop of 10 pairs of vintage shoes on my jewelry website, and they sold out in a minute. And I thought “Okay, this is it. I found my thing.” It just clicked.

M: Isn’t that such a funny thing about life? You expect things to kind of go in a simple order where one thing follows another. But what actually happens with these incredible shifts in life is that they happen all at once. And so you leave a tenuous relationship, you have this whole career change, you post this video and it goes viral while you're trying to figure everything out…

A: And the journey of self-discovery is really what leads you to that passionate career. I had to really understand myself to do what I do now. It makes so much sense for who I am and the way I was raised and my interest my whole life, but I wouldn't have seen that and discovered it without deeply understanding myself first.

M: Talk to me a little bit about that journey.

A: I feel like so much of the advice tells people to, like, journal and drink lemon water. But sometimes it’s really ugly to just understand yourself and hit rock bottom. It’s not pretty, and it takes a long time. I had to have so many conversations with myself, specifically about what I was good at. I knew I wasn’t a designer or a fashion stylist. I wasn’t a marketing genius or a corporate person. But I’m a tastemaker — I know what looks good together, so how can I build my eye around making things look good?

I was going back-and-forth about whether or not I could actually do an entire brand change, stop selling jewelry, and just pivot to vintage. But then I got a ride home from a party from a friend-of-a-friend who was telling me about his amazing career, and he asked what I did. And I told him I had a vintage clothing studio, which I didn’t actually have at that time, but I started elaborating on this vision that I had for it. And I believed it, and it was this flow in my mind, and I knew that’s what I had to do.

M: It's almost like your brain knew before your heart even did, and that's why you kind of just blurted it out in that way.

A: Yes, and I just wanted to do something that I would be proud of and proud to tell other people about. That’s always been the most important thing to me — just do work that I’m proud of and the money will flow.

M: I really relate to that, especially with my own writing. I’m constantly worried about monetizing. But my husband is always reminding me to just create things that I love and the audience and money will follow.

A: It's finding a balance too. Obviously you want to find monetary success in your work, but it's definitely not the priority for me. The priority for me is to do work that I'm proud of.

M: When we first set up this chat you told me a bit about your experience with plant medicine as a way to help on this self-discovery journey…

A: I’d spent pretty much the year before I made this shift stagnant because of depression, but I didn’t know it was depression. I thought there was something physically wrong with me. I was just very vulnerable and I was in my mid-twenties in this long-lasting, very toxic relationship that drained me and took a big part of my self-identity from me. So I just rebuilt that through hard work, and it was so uncomfortable, but so worth it. I went to different body workers and I would just feel all of these emotions leave my body — through chiropractic practices and deep, deep breath work techniques.

I know it's a taboo topic to some, but I really attribute plant medicine to a lot of my growth during that time. I would take a little microdose blend with a tiny bit of psilocybin and LSD, and then a bunch of different herbs like ashwagandha and different plants. And it fucking worked. I took a little bit every day. I never felt a side effect where I felt high. But I was more optimistic and I was more open to receiving. I was less hard on myself, more creative. It really just ignited something in me.

M: Was there a moment early on in your business where you looked up and thought, “Wow, I’m really doing this?”

A: I moved really fast. I was so relieved to find something that I felt like was my flow. I started the business in November and by January I had the cutest studio office that was way out of my budget on Sunset Boulevard. I was getting outreach from these massive celebrities DMing me and Kylie Jenner’s stylist came in and purchased some things from me. And then one day there was a picture of her on Instagram in a dress she bought from me. I called my mom and she started hysterically crying. We’re not even super fans of the Kardashians. But it was so unexpected, because I’m selling one-of-a-kind items. So once they’re out the door, I kind of forget about them.

M: But that’s the beauty of vintage though, isn’t it? I always say that vintage finds you.

A: It does. Sometimes I'll hold onto something and I have no idea why. And then the right person will appear and I'm like, “This is for you.”

M: It's interesting to hear you talk about how personal this type of shopping and selling is. I wonder if you feel like you were able to access this type of work because of all the inner work that you did.

A: Absolutely. For me, it's extremely intuitive. I don't receive bins of things. I don't buy in bulk. I don't buy from wholesalers. Every single piece is handpicked. Like, even though I just traveled for two weeks and I went all over Europe, I only came back with 15 or 20 items. Things either speak to me or they don’t.

M: And I feel like that’s something that is missing in so much of the work that women do. Work has a tendency to be really soul-sucking. But hearing you speak about the work that you do…it feels like you’re doing it from your soul.

A: It really is so joyful for me. It brings me so much joy to find something special and give it to the right person and see that the joy it brings them. Because like you said, I'm also an avid vintage shopper and collector myself. And when I find something that just speaks to me, it's the best feeling in the world.

M: That openness and sharing feels a little lacking in the vintage community. There’s a lot of gatekeeping, don’t you think?

A: Absolutely. But you give and you receive — that’s what keeps the world going around. That’s why I’ve written full vintage guides to every city where I’ve sourced in my Substack, because I think that’s the way it should be. And I’ve learned about those places through my own discovery, but also through other generous girls.

I don’t understand the gatekeeping because it’s also all divine timing. You might go to the store yesterday and not walk away with anything. But then I might walk in today right after they do a restock, and it's like the perfect dress is there for me. You can't control it. So why not share?

M: What would you say to a woman who was waffling about whether or not to invest in the dream she has for herself and her career?

I mean, I'm still figuring out every day. I really think it goes back to being in that flow state and however you find that flow state is unique to you. This is just the way I found it — through plant medicine and hitting a rock bottom. But being in your flow state is really where I think you find your joy and any way you can accomplish that is where you're going to find the answers.

M: And when you say you're in your flow state, how would you describe that?

A: It really is a feeling. When you're in it, just things make sense. You're not second guessing yourself. It comes back to being deeply connected to your intuition and just believing what you feel.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.