By Story and photos by Emily Ask
I’ll admit, fashion isn’t quite my forte. I was always the type who would wear jeans and a t-shirt while looking through magazines, thinking the models’ outfits were nice but nothing I could ever take the time to coordinate myself.
Lately that mindset has changed ever so slightly, and I’ve decided to try some new things with my wardrobe. Less jeans and more skirts, brighter colors instead of black and patterned tights instead of regular ones. I may not be any more of a fashionista but it’s a lot more fun and creative than boring myself with predictable outfits.
This is especially fun for those in Kensington, one of Calgary’s most unique and long-standing shopping districts. The area is known for specialty stores and boutique shops full of clothes, accessories and fashion not found anywhere else in the city.
And here’s where I find my next statement a little bit disheartening: I bought more clothes at the American Apparel in Kensington than anywhere else over the summer. Why? Of all the choices between local designers and consignment boutiques, why was I resorting to a store I could find in any mall?
Well, even though I’m willing to put more work into my outfit, I put even more work into, well, work! I had little time for shopping besides the evenings. Walking around Kensington after work I discovered that all the smaller retail stores closed at 5 or 6 p.m., but American Apparel was one of the only stores open until 9 p.m. Either I could wait until the weekend to catch the other stores when they were open, or I could buy a new skirt from American Apparel and get it over with.
Sometimes convenience outweighs preference.
That got me thinking. If Kensington is the best place to shop in Calgary, but the stores have the same hours as your local bank, how many people come to Kensington and truly discover all the unique fashion it has to offer? It’s seemed a shame that the area just wasn’t busy enough in the evening to afford staying open later, especially after the recession.
Then I read an article about Fashion’s Night Out, an event that Vogue editor Anna Wintour started two years ago to combat the effects of the recession on the fashion industry.
Cities across the United States and the world participated during the first year and it was such a huge success that the list of participating cities grew for its second. The idea is that all participating stores stay open until 11 p.m. for one night, the opening night of New York Fashion Week. Then designers, models and musicians would host events inside the shops encouraging people to get excited about fashion and ultimately buy things.
While it all sounds quite extravagant, I still loved the idea that these business owners and designers were taking their industry into their own hands and turned it into something that benefited both the customer and the business. The customers got the experience of Fashion’s Night Out, the retailers got increased revenue. Could something similar help Calgary’s clothing districts? Perhaps smaller, more community-based events could draw more people to Kensington, increase customer traffic and revenue in the evenings to help businesses stay open later.
Who better to ask than Michelle Morigeau, owner and manager of Peacock Boutique, Calgary’s oldest consignment store. The boutique has been around since 1975 and Morigeau’s family owned it for the last 16 years.
She said that over the last decade and a half, rents have skyrocketed in Kensington. So many businesses have come and gone, some not even lasting 6 months or a year before they move on and another business fills the space.
Peacock Boutique was lucky to have a 15 year lease, so the store remained largely unaffected by the increases everyone else was facing. However, when the lease expired last year, Morigeau had to deal with all the market changes at once as the owner wanted to quadruple her rent. Since the business had been around for so long and her family was friends with the landlord, she was able to negotiate the new lease down a bit, but nevertheless it forced the store to go through some changes to keep up.
Her store does well enough during the day that she can close at 6 p.m. and still make rent, but she admitted it would be nice if she and other businesses could stay open later. In the past, it’s required community effort to get the stores to coordinate their hours.
“The Kensington [Community] Association came up with businesses staying open late on Thursdays and Fridays, and that went for a long time– even we were open late– but then it gets down to a point where if you’re not making the sales in the extra two hours of staying open, then why are you paying someone to be here? So some business dropped out of that.”
I mentioned Fashion’s Night Out in New York and she really took to the idea of doing something similar in Kensington.
“Having something like that to bring people down, I think that’s a great idea,” she said.
“There definitely could be a little bit more community with the stores working together.”
My next stop was Eleven Eleven, a store across the street that features local designers and eco-friendly clothing.
Lana Salvi, co-owner and manager, keeps the store open until 9 p.m. but notes that it isn’t always worth the effort.
“It would be kind of neat to have Kensington as more of a late night destination,” she said. “There really isn’t anywhere in the city like that, opposed to malls, of course. It’s something that we do just because we can but it is harder to stay open while other businesses are closed, for sure.”
“I definitely do love Kensington a lot,” she continued. “It really is a special unique little area and I would love to see it become more . . . of an arts-minded community, more of a community-minded community.”
She also states that despite the high lease rates, she understands landowners also feel the effects of the recession. If one retailer can pay a better lease price than another, it’s just the nature of business.
Sheri Atkinson, co-owner of iAppeal, an accessory and gift store in Kensington, explained that Kensington is part of the Business Revitalization Zone so the City of Calgary works to preserve the character of the area and encourage people to visit the neighborhood. Ads on the C-Train stating “Get Back to Style in Kensington” are the BRZ’s handiwork, as well as the Sun and Salsa Festival and other seasonal activities that draw a crowd.
“I know around Christmas time a lot of stores will stay open later, just ’cause people are doing a lot more shopping,” she says. “[The BRZ] does a really good job of lighting up the trees and making it quite festive at night time, it’s a fun place to be. We should try to carry that around for the rest of the year.”
She says the Business Revitalization Zone has also kept away most large retail chains, maintaining Kensington’s character as a place for small business and specialty shops.
“I think the reason that people come to Kensington is to get away from the big national retailers that you can find in the mall,” Atkinson explained. “Everybody can dress the same way if they all go to the mall, but in Kensington you might find something a little unique, you might find something you would never see in the mall or a trend that has never reached the mall because small business owners might be more on top of that than the national chains.”
A local real estate agent at Avison Young Real Estate said that Kensington has probably the best single story retail market in Calgary. If a business leaves one location in Kensington, offers immediately come up to fill them, including ones from national retailers. Because of this national retail interest Kensington may look a bit different in the next couple years.
Trend Fashion manager Nikki Cole explains that as a consignment store, the business relies on what people buy from larger retail stores and then give to Trend. She thinks that a few national retail chains would not significantly alter Kensington, but help everyone in the area by drawing more traffic.
“It’s kind of better for us to an extent because people are going to want to come down here and go to those stores and then that just adds to our business,” she said. “Girls are going to make a whole day out of shopping and not just come down for one store, so it benefits us. We love retail stores, the more the merrier.”
She added that it was hard for Trend to stay open late because she would need to hire more staff. Any sales made in the evening would likely go towards simply paying the extra staff, not creating revenue.
James Chouinard, co-owner of Grassroots, a retailer specializing in hemp clothing and other products, says his business’ growth has been impacted by the recent lease increases.
“Every bit you’ve grown the business has been eaten up by increases in prices, like huge increases in leases, so it’s kind of been a standstill proposition for your business,” he explained. “When you increase your business that much more and then all the lease increases came around and ate up everything you’ve grown your business with, you’re kind of starting from square one.”
He doesn’t think that bringing in bigger retail shops is the right answer to get people to come to Kensington, though.
“You want an American Apparel? Go to the mall. You want a Shoppers Drug Mart go to, well, pretty much any place in Calgary,” he said. “Same thing with Safeway, right? Kensington is special because it is a unique little community of specialty style shops and individual business. That’s what makes it special in my mind.”
Mandi Sim owns Splash of Fashion, a store tucked into a building between Kensington Road and Kensington Crescent. While she agrees that while more retail stores mean better business for everybody, she would still prefer to see smaller, specialty shops take precedence instead of multi-national retailers.
Most people seemed to like the idea of Fashion’s Night Out as a way to bring more shoppers into the area, even referring to other places they had seen similar ideas implemented. Art Central, for example, stays open until 9 p.m. the first Thursday of every month so customers can mingle and check out the latest wares of the designers and artists.
“I know in Toronto they had something sort of like [Fashion’s Night Out] where a few stores around Young Street stayed open late and at each store they offered a different discount to actually entice people to come,” Sim recalled. “We need something more like that too, for sure.”
As the Christmas season approaches, many shops will see more traffic, although most businesses are very dependent on the weather. It is clear that the people of Kensington have something to share, and that is their love of Kensington.
Getting people out of the malls and into Kensington isn’t simply about transferring money, it’s about creating community and allowing Calgarians to enjoy a space more unique than any other.