Alex Tunnell finished just one semester at Southern Union Community College before he dropped out as the side hustle he’d been doing since middle school was finally starting to take off.

Tunnell was in middle school when he first started selling sneakers as a little side business.

Once he got to high school, he started creeping into the thrifting space, selling anything he could on eBay.

But after moving to Auburn and enrolling at Southern Union, he was starting to pocket his profits and saw a market opportunity on The Plains. So he rented a small space in a smoke shop in downtown Auburn and started operating his first vintage clothing storefront.

“For the first couple of years we were over there for a while just trying to get it off the ground a little bit,” said Tunnell, owner of Atelier Auburn. “We didn’t have a ton of inventory, but just kept reinvesting the profits one thing after another.”

Eventually, a small, standalone shop on North Ross Street, just east of downtown became available in 2019. So Tunnell packed up his small batch of inventory, moved into the new space and opened Atelier Auburn.

“We had some other hiccups along the way,” Tunnell said. “But really over the last year or so, we’ve been able to push things in the direction we feel like it needs to go for the future.”

In recent years, the popularity of vintage fashion has surged. It’s sustainable and nostalgic.

Fortunately for Tunnell, Auburn fans love it too.

The tough part? It’s called vintage for a reason. The stuff isn’t being made anymore, so sourcing it is a bit like an Easter egg hunt.

“This is our first year we’ve been able to put together a large inventory of Auburn stuff,” Tunnell said.

Much of the sourcing starts by simply spreading the word.

Teller introduces himself to others in the thrifting and vintage industry as the “Auburn guy” – meaning if they happen to come across anything Auburn related, he wants it and will spend a bit more for it.

“We’ve gotta make a certain margin on all our stuff, but we’re okay making a little bit lesser margin on Auburn stuff because we know the importance of having it here and bringing it back to the city and selling it that way,” Tunnell said.

A lot of the vintage Auburn stuff at Atelier Auburn is sourced out of the Auburn, Birmingham and Huntsville areas, Tunnell says.

But just as the Auburn Family is spread out across the country, so are many of the pieces that Tunnell brings into Atelier. Packages that contain vintage Auburn apparel come from all over the southeast and the rest of the country and find their way to Atelier Auburn.

“We feel like our job is to bring if from all over the country and bring it back to where it needs to be and sell it to students and people who love the university,” Tunnell said.

Saturday was a big day for Tunnell and Atelier Auburn as the Auburn Tigers football team hosted the No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs. And with a sellout crowd scheduled to take over Jordan-Hare Stadium, Tunnell wanted to make sure he had the right inventory out.

Ahead of each game day, Atelier Auburn releases Auburn “drops”, meaning new products make their way from the warehouse to the store’s racks. And how that’s all decided is pretty calculated.

“We’ll kinda match it what color everybody is wearing to the game as well,” Tunnell said. “So Auburn has white-outs or orange-outs… so we’ll try to pull stuff for that specifically.”

Fans attending Saturday’s game were encouraged to wear orange, so a lot of the near 100-piece drop ahead of the Georgia matchup was orange in color.

But because Auburn and Georgia have a long history of playing one another, Tunnell also had the opportunity to track down Auburn shirts specific to the Georgia matchup.

“There’s always the 90s Tiger Rags stuff with different teams from back in the day. So this Auburn drop, we pulled all of our tees from when they beat Georgia back in the 90s and stuff,” Tunnell said. “This is the biggest one we’ve done so far. It’s been good to finally be able to do it this way. And have enough inventory to be able to roll it out.”

Products from the Tiger Rags line are big hits at Atelier Auburn, Tunnell says. Some Tiger Rags shirts from the 80s and early-90s feature Aubie the Tiger dressed up as different movie characters like Batman and Freddy Krueger.

“We always try to hang onto those when we get them,” Tunnell said.

And while so much of what Tunnell and Atelier Auburn does is focused on the past, there’s also some forward thinking involved.

Last week, Atelier rolled out its first original design – a “Freeze Warning” t-shirt that mirrors the art styles of those seen on t-shirts in the 80s and 90s thanks to the work of Annie Cobb.

“We took play on the Freeze Warning thing that they’ve been pushing out lately but we kinda paid homage to those 90s and 80s Tiger Rags tees with the big characters,” Tunnell said. “It’s just our way of bringing back something that everybody loves from the past and putting our own spin on it.”

Forward thinking also meant finding a way into the name, image and likeness space with student-athletes at Auburn.

Auburn veteran defensive back Jaylin Simpson has been a loyal customer of Atelier Auburn since he was a freshman in 2019. And once NIL legislation was passed in 2020, Tunnell saw it as an opportunity to get guys like Simpson involved in marketing Atelier Auburn.

Tunnell also used former Auburn basketball player Zep Jasper to promote Atelier Auburn before he graduated last year.

“We definitely want to try to get more into the NIL space and see what we can do. But right now, it’s something simple,” Tunnell said. “We eventually want to start rolling out merch and stuff like that and see if we can create product lines around certain recruits and stuff like that as well.”

Looking to buy or sell vintage Auburn apparel? Contact Atelier Auburn at 334-329-2877.