Montreal has its friperies, dotting boulevard St-Laurent and Mont-Royal. New York has St. Mark’s Place. But when you’re young and crave a sense of style on the cheap, thrifting in Kensington Market is a Toronto rite of passage. It’s a bit more expensive than trolling Value Village and Goodwill, but not by much, and with better odds. There’s the thrill of the hunt (and score) for vintage Levi’s cords or a barely worn peacoat at Exile, cowboy boots and retro work shirts at Roger DeSouza’s Flashback or vintage concert tees at Astro.
A couple of years ago, I bought a navy vintage cardigan from the ’60s, heavily encrusted with pearls and beads, at a hole-in-the-wall vintage store in Kyoto, Japan. I chatted up the owner, who soon admitted that he had picked my gem up from none other than Flashback on one of his semi-annual Toronto buying trips. He then pointed out dozens of other items, all found in the crammed secondhand racks of Kensington Market or the established designer vintage shops around the city.
Toronto enjoys a strong reputation for vintage clothing, and, despite the economy, vintage tourism is still thriving, says Victoria Dinnick, owner of east-side shopping destination Gadabout (1300 Queen St. E., gadabout.ca) and member of Vintage Fashion Guild, the network of knowledgeable vintage dealers and boutiques. Dinnick has regular private clients and buyers from New York (“name a big New York vintage store and they come here”) as well as fabric- and vintage-buyers from Japan, who come twice a year.
“They love North American vintage fashion. The guy from one store either likes very old leathergoods from the 1920s, or he loves the kind of coats that somebody would wear while they were working, like a Union coat, with the patches sewn on,” she explains.
Another buyer feeds Japan’s various girl-costume subcultures with old Canadian school uniforms. Then there’s the vintage car-club set, “who have to dress in the vintage of their car for meets, right down to the knickers.” And, of course, the film wardrobers: That gorgeous Ceil Chapman blue dress covered in roses that Drew Barrymore wore in the HBO feature Grey Gardens seduction scene? From Gadabout.