About

My name is Alice - I started working in retail in the year 2000, and I have always LOVED it. I love the transformative power of a great outfit - and I love the dedication it takes to produce a beautiful quality garment. I can appreciate why something truly worth making (and buying) needs a price tag that can cover high quality fabric, and good wages for the garment worker. I think clothes should be an investment! But I've been around for a minute, so I remember when that was slightly more approachable than it is now. So there's that aspect of it, for sure.

This sale, which used to be called "The Secret Sale", started many years ago as a hobby - a very fun way to help find new homes for the super beautiful things I sold my clients, and a way to keep friends dressed well (without having to resort to shopping fast fashion).

I had a bit of a reckoning with myself in 2019. I wondered what were the implications (environmentally) of my choice to work in retail all my life, to promote buying new items to those whom I dressed? I thought about 20 years of receiving shipments in the shops where I worked, every garment wrapped in plastic - individually. Even in the smallest of shops, getting a delivery means huge amounts of plastic wrap into the garbage. Plastic hangars in the garbage. TONS and tons of garbage. But, I mean, you have to ship things in plastic so that they don't get damaged in transport.

And that's to say nothing about the environmental cost of manufacturing new clothes. Each garment that is made causes water pollution (during the fabric/leather dying process), and if you aren't buying expensive items from a designer with ethical manufacturing, the factory conditions can often be closely compared with slavery - and it's next to impossible to verify the truth. The one thing I know for sure is that producing new garments is problematic, and we should all be buying WAY LESS, especially brand new.

I dunno, I know that new clothes need to be made - and it's my hope that every single one of those new garments is made to the highest standard possible. I just felt like it was time for some of the industry's senior people to focus on solutions, so I decided to work on luxury resale as a full-time job. And, here I am! It's a passion to work to help people who LOVE beautiful things to find beautiful pieces re-sale.

Sometimes it's about taking your annual clothing spend, and making sure that the pieces you get are going to really last you. Sometimes it's about making room in the budget shopping re-sale so that you can manage to swing some EPIC investment piece brand new. Sometimes it's about the environmental aspect of it - sure, the garment was produced once upon a time - but that carbon footprint is way smaller when the garment's lifecycle is as long as possible.

Shopping consignment is only one aspect of what I like to refer to as "The Trifecta": the other two aspects being Upcycling and Recycling. The main goals are to - at all costs - keep anything made from fabric OUT OF THE LANDFILL. Most of the luxury pieces I sell are literally never going to end up in the landfill - you'd have to be insane to throw something beautiful away!! But the upcycling and re-cycling aspects of the trifecta deserve our attention too. This is something in the future I very much hope to work on too -it is my dream to see the fashion industry as a whole significantly reduce it's horrific environmental footprint. I can see what I want the future of ethical shopping in Canada to look like, and this is the first step. I appreciate your support in helping me achieve this one day!