Parting with her stock is such sweet sorrow

[attach]5568[/attach]After 20 years of collecting vintage and rare clothes and accessories, Monique Nanton could no longer house her growing collection.

“I had too much,” she says. “I had to move it somewhere and basically it was sort of a now or never kind of deal.”

Although she had already been selling online since 2008, she decided to open a storefront Boutique Monique, which is filled with blazers, pants, dresses, shoes and coats for women along with some items for men.

“This is all very personal to me because I pick each piece,” she says. “If you pick up any of these pieces here I can tell you about it, if it’s going to fit you and where it’s made because I read labels, I turn things inside out.”

Nanton, who also works as a freelance graphic designer and art director, says she gained an appreciation for how clothes are made after learning how to tailor clothes as a hobby. Rather than doing consignment or buying in bulk, she says she selects her stock from thrift stores and garage and church sales.

“What attracts me is either the fabric, the cut and the way it hangs, just even on the hanger and I can tell how it’s going to fit on somebody’s body,” she says. “It’s never necessarily the label.”

She says she chose her location on St. Clair Avenue W. near Oakwood Avenue because she has lived in the community her whole life and needed to be near where her daughters go to school.

“I just really know this area and I’m comfortable here and I’ve watched the changes in the area,” she says. “It’s my hometown Toronto neighbourhood.”

Boutique Monique is divided into different rooms, including a salon and a shoe room. She says the store reflects her personal taste and has been told by her friends the store feels like her house.

“My main thing was I wanted people to walk in and feel like they needed to take their shoes off, which means they feel like they’re walking into a house,” she says. “My kind of philosophy is I believe that any body, any woman, can look good. I want every woman to feel good and look good.”

She specifically created change rooms with more than one hanger so people could hang their personal items separate from the clothes they’re trying on and included benches for handbags and purses.

“My personal pet peeve about change rooms, even in expensive places, is there’s never anywhere to hang your coat separate from what you’re going to try on so you end up hanging everything on the same hook and then digging for the thing you’re going to try on after you take off your coat,” she says.

Nanton hopes people feel comfortable in her store and don’t feel pressured to buy something. She also wants women to try things on and get a sense of what size they are because, she says, a lot of people think they are bigger than they actually are.

“I just want people to know that it’s okay to come in here and treat it like a museum as well as it’s okay to come in here and buy,” she says. “Sometimes it’s just nice to look at a dress from the 1930s and a lot of people have never seen that and they’re amazed that people even wore those things.”

Although one of her goals is to sustain the store for at least five years, she says she gets sad when she loses some of her pieces to a customer.

“I’m not even kidding you,” she says. “Every time I sell something I’m like aw, I loved that one.”