I’ve spent most of my life bringing home things I probably didn’t need and finding remarkably convincing reasons to keep them. Fortunately, somewhere along the way, I figured out how to make a career of it.

I’m Elaine Kirby, a lifelong collector, designer, retailer, merchandiser, creative consultant and serial entrepreneur who has actually opened only a fraction of the businesses I’ve concepted in my very crowded brain.

My career has never fit neatly into one box. I’ve designed products, built brands, created stores, dreamed up retail concepts, merchandised more displays than I could possibly count, traveled the world looking for inspiration, opened a café or two, consulted for other creative businesses and spent an alarming number of hours digging through antique shops, flea markets and establishments with questionable lighting and tremendous potential.

The common thread through all of it has always been the hunt.

I started in retail during college with Watch Hill Gourmet & Gifts, a seasonal shop in Rhode Island where I grew up, and where everyone in my family was cheerfully required to work free of charge.

From there came New York and a tour of duty at The Wedding List, followed by more than a decade as part of the founding team at Juliska, where I eventually served as VP of Design & Visual.

Those years took me from product development in Europe to trade fairs in Paris, retail design, visual merchandising and the wonderfully messy business of turning ideas into actual things people wanted to live with. Vintage was always lurking somewhere in the process. I hunted it down for design inspiration, folded it into displays and used it to give new products a little history, tension and soul.

And because apparently my day job wasn’t providing quite enough opportunity to accumulate things, I kept a vintage booth at Hiden Galleries in Stamford, followed by a vintage jewelry case at Fairfield County Antique & Design. Both provided respectable homes for collections that had long since exceeded the reasonable boundaries of my own house.

Eventually, I returned to having shops of my own, and naturally, vintage came along for the ride.

Kirby and Company, and later Kirby Girl, became fixtures in Darien, Connecticut, the town where I was raising my two daughters and a place that remains an important part of our story. The stores were ever changing mixes of things I loved: home, fashion, gifts, vintage, emerging makers, curious objects, beautiful things, slightly peculiar things and plenty that didn’t necessarily belong together until somehow they did.

That was usually the point.

But the stores became more than what was on the shelves. People came in to shop, have coffee, see what had arrived, catch up and occasionally stay much longer than they intended. I loved that. The idea that a shop can be a place people belong as much as a place people buy things is still one of my favorite things about retail.

Today, I continue my consulting practice, working with brands and retailers on everything from concepts and merchandising to product, visual identity and spaces. After all these years, I suppose I’ve become something of a generalist in the world of retail and décor, which is a much nicer way of saying I know a lot about a lot of things and still have absolutely no interest in staying in one lane.

And then there is still Kirby and Company.

The physical shop may have closed its doors, but apparently I never really did.

The name stayed. The hunting never stopped. And now Kirby and Company has found its way back to what was quietly there all along: vintage.

I don’t collect according to any particularly sensible set of rules. I buy with my eye and my gut. Sometimes it’s the craftsmanship. Sometimes it’s the color, shape, scale, patina or history. Sometimes it’s wildly beautiful. Sometimes it’s wonderfully odd. Sometimes I have no defensible explanation whatsoever.

Those are often the best finds.

And then there is kismet. That marvelous bit of chance when you stumble upon something you weren’t looking for, in a place you never expected to find it, and somehow know immediately that it was waiting for you.

Mostly, I’m drawn to things with personality. Pieces with a past, a little wit, an unusual detail or just enough imperfection to make them interesting. The things that give a room another layer and make a home feel collected over time rather than decorated all at once.

These days, I hunt up and down the East Coast, but really, wherever I happen to be. Antique shops, estate sales, flea markets, thrift stores, roadside stops and anywhere else that suggests something good might be hiding inside. I am constitutionally incapable of passing one without wondering what I might be missing.

So, more often than not, I stop the car.

There is one part of all of this that is completely new.

I’ve never documented the hunt.

Somewhere along the way, while I was busy doing what I had always done, vintage hunting became a sport. A very public one. Suddenly there are cameras in thrift stores, estate sale hauls on TikTok and what feels like a zillion people hunting right alongside me.

I love that. I just never thought to bring a camera.

So while I may know my way around an antique shop, I’m a complete beginner at bringing anyone along. I run from cameras and am now reluctantly learning the brave new world of Reels, TikTok, voiceovers and tripods.

Bear with me.

I may be new to documenting the hunt.

I am definitely not new to the hunt.