Cat’s Meow celebrates fashion purrfection
Louise Cooper has some new tricks for selling old clothes. The hepcat-in-chief behind the Cat’s Meow, a small boutique in the gentrifying Avenue and Davenport neighbourhood, Cooper caught our attention by styling the shop’s plate glass windows with three well-dressed mannequins in matching vintage ensembles that change every week. So nicely styled is this trio that it regularly draws me in the door. And so well stocked with one-of-a-kind finds is Cooper’s well-curated selection that I rarely find myself leaving empty-handed — particularly during this party-hearty season when a well-priced statement piece can be a lifesaver.
“At first, when I opened back in 2006, it was the windows that would bring people in,” says Cooper. “Now it’s more from my blog and the Internet.” Indeed, what Cooper does as a retailer of vintage clothes seems increasingly like a combination of a magazine editor with a museum curator, involving documentation, editorial choices and the art of display. Luckily, she is a savvy mistress of all of three while possessing that extra key asset: a gift for fashion gab.
“Ah, that one is Alaia,” Cooper says of a black scoop-neck knit dress with petal-like trim I am admiring on a mannequin. When I remark how much more elegant and complex it is over the ubiquitous Band-Aid dress from Herve Leger, Cooper adds, “Apparently they absolutely hate each other.”
Cooper sells to collectors, many from the States, and also to designers. “They come in looking for ‘inspiration’ in an old garment and then frankly, rip it off,” says Cooper. “But at the end of the day, it is still paying homage to good design.”
In Cooper’s opinion, the real problem with fashion now isn’t a dearth of ideas but “that it’s become so corporate. There’s too much pressure now on designers and no room to be creative.”
“Now it’s all about logos being front and centre,” says Cooper, adding that it is the bane of her existence that beautifully made clothing comes in from estate sales where the logo has been cut out. “Back in the day women would go to Paris and buy fabulous clothes from Dior and Chanel and they would actually cut out the logos so they didn’t have to pay the luxury tax back at home.”
The giveaway for Cooper with a label-free garment is in its construction. “Things used to be made with pride,” says Cooper. “A lot of these pieces aren’t necessarily hanger-friendly, but they are seamed and tailored to come alive on the body.”
Clothes today, in contrast, “are made to sell off the hanger,” says Cooper. “What has taken the place of true tailoring since the ’80s is the addition of Spandex and Lycra.”
That lost artisanal quality, in Cooper’s view, along with the inherent uniqueness of each find, is what makes a vintage garment such great value.
So not only is buying something from another era a rejection of the big corporate marketing machine of contemporary designer fashion, “it’s very much a validation of your own style choice,” says Cooper. “When someone at a party compliments you, you get to say, ‘it’s vintage.’ ” Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.