Green Story

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Everyone knows it, everyone's heard it.  But while many businesses may subscribe to or emphasize one of the "three Rs", for Portsmouth's Re-Enhabit, it's literally all in the name.

Re-Enhabit offers quality clothing, furniture, and accessories including cameras, typewriters, dinnerware, and much, much more -- mostly vintage, and almost all of it reconstituted or re-used. With a distinct passion for "finding beauty in the odd and the old", owner Jodi Curtis, who opened her doors on State Street in Portsmouth a little over a year ago (the store has since moved to 15 Daniel Street), has in the process redefined "vintage" in terms that are distinctly green and sustainable. Much of the clothing has been repurposed, with old concert tee-shirts being remade into scarves and skirts, old album covers rendered into catchy notebooks, and old, seemingly out-of-date furniture re-touched and made new again. Curtis also works with local artists, displaying their works in her store, much of it equally re-fashioned or re-imagined.

While the unique and charming items inside the store might look vintage and trendy, Curtis can easily trace the philosophy behind Re-Enhabit back to her childhood, and to the values of her parents, which she describes as "way ahead of their time". Even back before it was in vogue, Jodi's family of 9 maintained an organic farm, which they would help fertilize by bringing home kelp and seaweed from the ocean and rolling it into the soil. They even sold vegetables from the garden on the side of the road for money to buy their first color television. Today, Curtis and her family maintain a dedication to reducing their personal environmental footprint, maintaining an organic garden while remaining dedicated composters and recyclers.

The store itself appears both vintage and timeless at the same time, with clothing that harkens to the '80s, couches that scream Eisenhower, and dishware that is quintessentially New England. Indeed, vintage may be a style, but for Curtis and her customers, it's also a way of both appreciating and making legtitimate use of the past -- in short, good old fashioned conservation.

"In the end, we're not trying to live in the past," says Curtis. "Quite the contrary: we're using the past to move forward. And I can't think of anything more sustainable than that."