The Owners of This Vintage Furniture Shop Want You to Take a Chance on a Worse for Wear Armchair

Welcome to Good Vintage, a series that goes behind the scenes with furniture resellers and dealers to find out how they got their start, where they get their stuff, and what inspires them to keep it up. Know of someone we should talk to? Reach out.

You’d never guess when browsing the offerings at Normalish Studio, a laidback Chicago-based vintage furniture store, that the co-owners once serviced the billionaire class. John Perez and Raquel Bahena—partners in business "and in love," as Perez says—were previously in the automotive and aviation design industry, building out ultramodern private plane interiors for the country’s wealthiest using new materials that are mostly devoid of warmth or personality: fiberglass, black leather, aluminum, and paint. In early 2025, after a slew of bureaucratic headaches, Perez and Bahena were over it. "We decided to put the tools and skills we had in a different direction," says Perez.

That pivot was to vintage furniture. They took all of their luxury interior design, upholstery, wood, paint, and metal knowledge and applied it to used midcentury furniture instead. "We scoured Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for anything furniture-related we could shine and resell," says Perez. The couple launched Atomic Land Vintage last spring (with the intent of focusing solely on Atomic Age pieces) and opened a makeshift storefront in the warehouse they were leasing at the time. In addition to fixing up their own furniture finds, Perez and Bahena—along with the small team of employees they worked with at the time—picked up restoration, wholesale, and custom fabrication and modification work for other designers and furniture dealers in the city.