Photo by Sheila Teruty
Sheila Teruty
Sheila Teruty
The intersections of art, fashion and experience are explored by Sheila Teruty, whose vintage and styling businesses celebrate the individuality and spontaneity of the wearer. Teruty curates her shop Enter Portale and styles her clients according to her core values of sustainability, quality-over-quantity and clothing construction.
Aesthetically, Teruty has developed an eye for European vintage of the ‘90s and Y2K eras over the years. Her personal style, by her own account, mixes ‘health goth’ with 90’s rave and club culture. On the other hand, she presents her Enter Portale collection as a lot of ‘utility tech’ soft knits and elevated basics.
Conscious of fast fashion’s influence on modern apparel, Teruty finds a lot to be said about the archival pieces of a designer brand. “There’s enough clothing on the planet already,” she affirms. “I used to get really overwhelmed just from constantly being in thrift stores and thinking about all the thrift stores in the city and in the state and throughout the country. There’s no reason to be making as much as we are, and things are being made so poorly these days.”
She continues, “I try to focus on fabrics like cottons, linens and wools, and try my best to avoid polyester and acrylics at all costs. Usually, anything older than Y2K, the clothing construction is so much better.”
Happy Accidents
Teruty’s favorite part of the styling process would be the ‘happy accidents’ of it all. She contends, “You can do all the planning you want, but sometimes nothing works out the way you intended. It’s almost like you have to style on the spot, and I think that’s where the real creativity comes in, especially with time constraints. I often feel like a mad scientist worrying about the art direction, styling, and photography.”
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Originally from the Chicago suburbs, Teruty has lived in Wisconsin since 2008. Growing up, she frequently went antiquing with her mother at garage sales and flea markets. As a teenager, Teruty began trading and selling her family’s unwanted belongings and her own handmade items on eBay and in message boards, eventually creating an Etsy store.
Once Teruty began collecting vintage items of her own, however, she came across fabrics, cuts and styles she had never seen before, completely altering the way she perceived clothing. “It changed my brain chemistry in a way,” she remarks. “It just snowballed from there.”
Styling and photographing clothes on herself at first, Teruty soon began hiring models to showcase her collections. She continues to style part-time to this day, but now she also offers closet edits and refreshes to help clients purge what no longer fits, fill gaps of what they need, and pinpoint their visual narrative.
Slow Fashion, Small Closets
Photo by Sheila Teruty
Mesh Pants - Sheila Teruty
A woman models mesh pants for Enter Portale
“My most recent client had the biggest closet ever, and another closet in the basement,” Teruty shares. “It was a lot for her to pick outfits, so we narrowed it down and purged about a third. I went through each piece with her to find what wasn’t really working or whatever’s worth keeping. You would think it would be good to have a lot of options but it’s really not; the smaller the closet, the better.”
Some years in, Teruty branded her vintage business as Slow Wave, inspired by her desire to feel less rushed and more intentional in her day-to-day life. “The ‘Slow Wave’ refers to brain waves, but also slow fashion and my love for ambient music,” she explains. “It was liberating.”
Starting with a clean slate, Teruty recently closed her Bay View-based Amara Studios space in November and simultaneously rebranded her vintage business to Enter Portale, inspired by spiritual ideas like manifestation and transcendence.
The latest Enter Portale collection, dropped at the beginning of the month, features Italian utility pieces as well as softer everyday pieces. Items for sale include various shrugs, skirts and tops, a leather belt stack, a copper metallic sheer dress, a puff sleeve bodysuit, thigh-high moto boots, pointed toe heels and more. “It’s things that will stay in your closet forever or last another lifetime,” Teruty says.
While her shop is now entirely online, Teruty still does pop-ups once in a while. Outside of fashion and vintage, Teruty DJs under the name XEXYZ, playing techno and house music.
