The fibres of her being Ragpickers owner ‘can’t retire, because I’m actually here collecting all the stories’ By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 5:32 PM CST Friday, Dec. 12, 2025

When Kristen Andrews identifies as a cultural historian, it may seem cheeky. Humbly, she’s also called herself a professional shopper.

But why should those be mutually exclusive?

For nearly 40 years, she’s been owner-manager of Ragpickers Anti-fashion Emporium, one of Manitoba’s best-known second-hand clothing store in a city particularly known for its “post-consumer” industry.

Her storied business — now mostly rental-based and servicing everything from partygoers to film and theatre productions with costumes — lives these days at the Watkins Building, 90 Annabella St., in Point Douglas.

Over the decades, she’s rummaged through the dustbins of the city’s history, unafraid to rag-pick — literally — the refuse of our old garment factories.

She’s unearthed famous gems — such as, she says, a shirt Elvis wore in Blue Hawaii, which was verified and later auctioned — and obscure curiosities that tell rich stories for those who know how to read them.

“I’ve got approximately 35,000 items here, and I could tell you where every single one came from,” she says.

“(Fashion is) a language without words. Embroidery can tell you where someone came from, certain colours and patterns can tell you someone’s tribe and lineage and their cultural affiliations … That’s why I can’t retire, because I’m actually here collecting all the stories.”

Andrews, who is in her 50s, has also been an observer of, and participant in, historic changes surrounding the Exchange District.

The area was already transforming when she joined Ragpickers (founded in 1984 by Jen Picard) in the late 1980s.

By the middle of the 20th century, Winnipeg was one of Canada’s major apparel producers. Many of the factories of its Jewish-pioneered garment industry, sometimes known as the “shmatta” business (quite literally “rag” business in Yiddish), were based in Winnipeg’s Exchange District.

For different reasons — including the birth of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1989, which opened up Canadian manufacturing to greater competition from lower-cost foreign manufacturers — this industry, today, is a miniature of what it was.

“(Free trade) changed the occupancy of the Exchange District. All of those big spaces were suddenly available. So that’s when all the artists started moving in and the galleries popped up. (Then) came the second-hand stuff,” Andrews says. “When the independent rag factories were here, they were open to the public. So I would go and buy stuff by the pound.”

A new clothing industry was being born from the ashes of the old, as Andrews assumed ownership of Ragpickers in 1990.

Its first spacious home under Andrews was the Silpit Building at the corner of Arthur Street and McDermot Avenue. She’d taken over what had been a factory outlet and was subletting space to other emerging cultural fixtures, such the Underground Café, as well as modern and antique furniture dealers, whose businesses later became Hoopers, and Antiques and Funk.

Andrews says Ragpickers most memorable era as a retail outlet came a few years later, in the 2000s, when it lived closer to Main Street on McDermot. Seemingly every college hipster was wearing skinny jeans and flannel shirts courtesy of Andrews’ curation — often purchased for next to nothing during the store’s $20 all-you-can-wear sales, for which youth lined up down the block.

On weekend evenings, many of those same kids were back in their latest fits and kicks at the upstairs venue Andrews ran, Viva Libre Theatre, watching bands like Absent Sound and the Fo!ps, and browsing the adjoining used bookstore. Andrews says there were almost 700 shows in that venue.

After a stint beside the Graffiti Gallery on Gomez Street, Ragpickers settled into its current home in the Watkins Building. Andrews leases an entire floor, subletting to hair weavers, basket-makers and other artisans.

Her days of helping throw big events, such as the psychedelic Element Circus solstice parties, mostly seem behind her.

But she’s still playing with the Flaming Trolley Marching Band and organizes Ragpickers events, including its community drumming circle (tomorrow, 3-4.30 p.m. in support of South African youth theatre) and wreath-making workshop (Dec. 21, 2-5 p.m.).

An eventful career to be sure, but what threads tie it together, beyond fashion?

“In as much as Ragpickers, on the surface, has always been about thrift and the second-hand and circular economy, more so than anything, by watching what these monopolies and big players are doing, we are compelled to create our own mutual aid society,” says Andrews.

Talk of mutual aid may seem like a throwback to earlier moment in the city, when the Exchange was home to anarchist bookstores, libraries and restaurants.

But Andrews argues this focus matters more than ever in a country staring down deepening inequality and an accelerating climate crisis.

She’s disturbed by the rise of cheap fast fashion — thrown away, she says, almost as soon as its purchased online from overseas companies such as Shein — and what it’s doing to the environment.

And while she’s proud that used fashion appears to be entering into a new golden era — nearly half of Canadians say they bought second-hand clothing in the past year and Winnipeg has a high concentration of thrift stores — she worries this has allowed bigger industry players to overprice their goods at the expense of working-class customers.

While she hasn’t lost her activist streak, it’s as much about fun as politics for Andrews, who also settles on the title “sourceress” for her eclectic role in the world.

“Playing dressup is a thing that people have kind of forgotten how to do, and I don’t think we should have ever forgotten,” she says. “There is so much inspiration that comes from just being willing to play a little bit with colour, with texture, with doing something that’s just a little bit out of the norm. It does a tremendous amount for your spirit.”

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