Tuque boom: Designer’s hats a global hit
T.O. neighbourhoods on heads around the world, thanks to Tuck Shop Trading
You know those cool tuques you see across town with T.O. neighbourhoods like Parkdale and Cabbagetown knitted across the brow? Ever since they were first introduced in 2013 by Toronto designer Lyndsay Borschke under her heritage-inspired label, Tuck Shop Trading Co., they have been flying out of the doors of small boutiques and onto the heads of hipsters for whom a knit tuque proclaiming their allegiance has proved to be the perfect vehicle to express hometown pride.
Talk about a local story. With Tuck Shop Trading Co., Lyndsay Borschke has cleverly turned the notion of buying local, quite literally, on its head — making it not just a business strategy, but the business itself.
“I started thinking about how Toronto is this city of neighbourhoods,” Borschke says. “And instead of just slapping its name on to a T-shirt, I tried to take something iconic from each neighbourhood, like the big orange mural in Leslieville, or the old Parkdale sign, in yellow and gold, for inspiration. And people just went bananas.”
Borschke’s insight was that there was this burgeoning sense of pride bubbling up out there with no real outlet. “There’s often been sports team stuff, but no fashion or really fun piece that speaks to us about where we’re from.”
Instagram helped fuel the fire. “The benefits of social media and having hometown celebrities, like Jesse Giddings photographed wearing one of our toques at Sundance, have been amazing for us,” Borschke says.
It didn’t hurt that Borschke insisted on designing and manufacturing 80 per cent to 90 per cent of her goods locally, as well as offering them in small, neighbourhood bou- tiques with committed local followings.
Tuck Shop’s initial collection of 14 neighbourhood tuques has since expanded to 40. The pop-up shop she opened in the rear of Summerhill’s Love the Design became permanent. And Borschke has been busy expanding her offerings, with a summer line of tuques and T-shirts featuring Ontario cottage destinations (Georgian Bay and Lake Huron were the summer’s hottest sellers), local collaborations with fellow grassroots partners such as Sidewalk Hustle and a small, highend collection of heritage-inspired outerwear and clothing.
“My mother-in-law gave me an old Woolrich coat from the ’70s, which became the centrepiece of our collection,” Borschke says of her luxe, PEI-woven MacAusland Mills wool Cottage coat, Dreamy cape and a unisex buffalo check cabin vest, all of which qualify as “more stylish pieces you can wear from the city to the cottage.”
Hot tickets this holiday season will probably prove to be Tuck Shop’s “ski-bourhoods” — tuques for hot slopes like Whistler and Aspen, along with a rainbow of fine Scottish cashmere tuques in bright and sunny hues topped with a recycled fur pom.
And skiing isn’t the only sport where Tuck Shop is in on the action. This year, for the 103rd anniversary of the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League approached Borschke to create an exclusive run of 100 tuques for each of the league’s nine teams, plus a limited run pattern for the Grey Cup. Citing the fusion of sports, fashion and winter, Borschke says “the CFL wants fans to be able to rep their team in style.”
Building on the success of the City of Neighbourhoods collection, Borschke recently expanded her offerings south of the border to Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, working with small local retailers in each of those cities to nail the local design and feel.
Borschke was surprised that when she offered to do the same for some of the Japanese and South Korean boutiques she sells the Tuck Shop line to, they politely declined. “All they want is the Toronto neighbourhoods. Apparently Parkdale is really big in Japan.”