Zineb Lazraq had just lost her job when she decided to help her father at the shop.
Rachid Lazraq, 59, had spent more than three decades running Rich Collection Italia, a vintage shoe shop in east London. The pandemic, online shopping, and an increasingly aging clientele had brought him to the brink of closing the business he had built from scratch. Zineb, a 25-year-old journalist, noticed that a French influencer had called her father’s shop a hidden gem, and on July 7 she posted a video showing Y2K-style sandals she found among the shelves.
The video racked up 300,000 views overnight, and within days queues of up to two hours had formed outside the door. What Zineb did out of sadness at seeing her father’s business struggle ended up giving it back something time had taken away: a second chance.
