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A small town farm girl envisioned preserving memories and sustaining the outdoors. She never thought she would leave the comfort of the fields and gravel roads to explore big cities and follow her dreams.

Nicole Lorenson, owner of Preservation in the East Village, was driven by fashion and photography and traveled across “the States” to pursue her callings. Her store is a tribute of life lessons, adventures and preserving timeless pieces.

Some adventures were short-lived, but they always brought her back to where her heart is, Iowa.

Lorenson’s love of photography began on a farm in north-central Iowa with a twist-top, roll film camera. After endless photo shoots on the farm, her mother sat her down and told her that her photos of fences, animals and fields cost money to develop. After that conversation, Lorenson took her photos more seriously.

She never really thought twice about photography throughout high school because she was so busy with other activities.

“The first time I really thought about doing photography as a profession is when I got my senior pictures done, and I thought it was really cool,” Lorenson said.

Lorenson took a college photography course her senior year and met a couple professionals in the industry who went to Hawkeye Community College. After graduating high school, she went to Hawkeye and majored in commercial photography. She wanted to shoot products and fashion and began to build her vintage collection in college.

“I got into thrifting because I was a poor college student,” Lorenson said. “I liked finding unique pieces, and when I was in school, I photographed a lot of people in the vintage clothes.”

Through college, Lorenson was able to find her passion when it came to photography: portraits.

“I took portrait and was naturally good at it, probably because of my ability to connect with people,” Lorenson

said.

She moved to New York after she graduated to pursue photography. After a year, however, she hadn’t found a job with photography and got a job offer back in Iowa.

She worked at various studios in Iowa, but the one that fit the best for her was Cooper Image Design in Cedar Falls. She learned a lot about marketing, business, editing and photography. That adventure fizzled out, and she began her next journey in Colorado with her husband.

Lorenson wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, so she decided to start selling her vintage clothing on Etsy.

“Etsy was my first experience selling vintage, but it was definitely not how I envisioned selling,” Lorenson said.

After two years, she moved back to Des Moines, where she started thinking about how to make a store a reality.

“I had been thinking about a store for almost a decade at this point,” Lorenson said. “So when I moved to Des Moines, I started looking at spaces, and how it could work.”

“I liked all the small business owners and the type of people that shopped down here,” Lorenson said about the East Village. “I saw growth potential, and kept my eye out for spaces, and eventually I saw a place in this building.”

The developers gave her the go; she then had less than a month to turn it around.

Fifty pages of a business plan later, she was the new owner of Preservation in the East Village. After nearly a decade of envisioning her dream, it finally manifested. She chose the name Preservation because she wanted to think of a word that would embody what photography is to her and what upcycling vintage clothing meant to her.

“When I shoot photography, I am preserving memories, and with the vintage, I am preserving the eco system and those pieces,” Lorenson said.

Vintage is on the forefront of fashion, and people are open to it, now more than ever. Lorenson is here to show people how to wear vintage in a modern way, and her shop is here to represent the message behind it.

It is Lorenson’s mission to empower her clients and customers through her business by selling timeless pieces and to help the world by being sustainable and eco-friendly. The purchases customers make are helping the environment by using upcycled clothing rather then wasting resources to produce new clothing.

“I am trying to be very mindful about the brands that come in,” Lorenson said. “My goal is that all the pieces in the shop, if they aren’t recycled, fall under three categories; either they are made in the U.S. or their mission is to be sustainable and ethical or that they have a give back. All of things, I already do in the shop.”

Lorenson said she wants her commitment to sustainability to be apparent to people when they come into Preservation.