Rumors opened in the Spring of 2019, and is owned and operated by Allison Lyons. When you walk into Rumors, you may be surprised to learn that we are not a stand alone shop. 4211 Chamberlain Ave is home to three Des Moines businesses and we share the same door. Rogue Planet Music sells vintage vinyl and hi-fi vintage stereo equipment (and is co-owned by Allison’s boyfriend John Pope, and longtime friend Jesse Pace). And in the back of the shop, Jesse’s mom Dina runs Five Monkeys inc, a local paint your own pottery shop. We’ve got it all! Although our walls are more or less invisible and we're all family and friends, our 3 businesses are separate.
Rumors started as an Etsy shop out of a closet, and now is a small curated vintage boutique. We carry mens, ladies, and unisex vintage clothing, vintage cameras (the working kind) and a small variety of decor items like floor lamps and plant stands. We love 1950’s-1970’s the most, but all eras can be found here. If you’re in the jeans section for instance, you’ll see more 70s-90’s. We also scatter some antique pieces in, and that's not always limited to clothing.
When curating for the shop, we usually turn down the ultra formal or costume pieces, and buy garments for their every day wearability. We like the comfortable old sweatshirts, lived-in denim and extra thin tees. More than anything, we LOVE natural fiber. The majority of our pieces are made from cotton, wool, rayon, linen, silk and combinations of those. Polyester is hard to avoid, especially after the 1960’s, but we only sell non-natural material pieces that really stand out above the rest.
New items go out on the floor daily, and we post a weekly curated new arrivals sale on our instagram on Tuesdays at noon.
Heartland Bazaar is Rumors' vintage clothing market, currently it is a tri-annual event.
ABOUT
