The Way We Work Now
The President Ruined a Business I Spent 14 Years Building
Kate Goldwater says she’s shuttering her vintage thrift shop because of the government’s poorly handled pandemic response
The Way We Work Now is a series chronicling how people’s lives and careers have fundamentally changed because of the pandemic.
Kate Goldwater, 36, owned a vintage clothing store in Manhattan called AuH2O. Goldwater tried to reopen her business in July after New York’s Covid-19 lockdown orders lifted, but her in-person sales never recovered. She is now closing her doors permanently. Goldwater spoke to Meredith Clark about saying goodbye to a retail space she’d spent the last 14 years building up.
I went to college in New York and started a little business out of my dorm room. People would give me clothes to alter, or they would like something I was wearing and I’d make one for them. By my senior year, I had started a website, and I was selling at little open air markets. Then at 22, I found a space in the East Village on Seventh Street and built my business. By January 2020, I employed several people for the store, and I had just hired someone to do our Instagram full-time to keep up with demand online.
