Going out, in style

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/03/2019 (2705 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This year’s spring and summer colours are fuschia, lime green and even yellow but will turn to “bottle green” by the fall, a darker shade you see in antique bottle collections.

“It’s the new black,” said Rita Master, Master’s of London co-owner, of the greens flooding the fashion world this year.

But Master’s of London, the high-end woman’s fashion store on Roblin Boulevard, will only be here for the spring and summer lines. It has announced it’s exiting the retail scene.

Rita, 86, has co-owned high-end fashion stores in Winnipeg with her son, Ivan, 55, for 33 years. “It’s time for me to retire and for her to continue,” Ivan quipped.

“I think the key to our success here is we’ve never told somebody they looked good in something just to make a sale,” said Ivan. “We’ve always felt that if they go out and in our eyes look fabulous, they’re our advertisement.”

So it means telling people the truth: yes, no, wrong colour, wrong design, just right, it’s you.

“I don’t think anyone sees themselves like someone else sees them,” said Rita. “They’ll look in the mirror and see the bad points of their bodies.”

It’s what has endeared customers like Arlene Jones-Chambers to the fashion retailers for over three decades.

“It’s a personal service and it will never be duplicated by anyone else,” Jones-Chambers said. “You’ll never get that kind of service from a department store. You’re lucky if you can find someone to help you.”

It helps that Rita “has a wonderful fashion sense, even at 86 years of age,” she said.

Online purchasing is also eliminating the kind of personal touch that mom-and-pop stores, or in this case, mom-and-son, provide. “People are going to miss out on having a retailer that knows them, that understands them, that knows their history, their family, the interaction you really don’t get by pressing a button” to make purchases over the internet, said Ivan.

Rita and her two children emigrated from London, England, in 1984. The early 1980s were grim days in London with Irish Republican Army bombs going off in mailboxes, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs. Rita was determined to move to Winnipeg, where she had family.

They ran a retail shoe shop in London — in fact, Rita’s husband died of a heart attack in the store while she was attending a family wedding in Winnipeg — so she cast about for a retail niche here.

Rita noticed there wasn’t a quality fashion store for “plus size” women, just chain store clothes. So she launched La Grande Femme on Academy Road in 1986, which moved down the street into the former Touch of Class building in 1993.

In 2001, it moved into the Grant Park Shopping Mall under the name Boutique la Femme and was now catering to women of all sizes. It spent three years in Tuxedo Junction on Corydon Avenue, then moved onto Roblin Boulevard in the former Charleswood Department Store five years ago and changed its name again, this time to Master’s of London, the name the family operated under in England.

To find their lines of couture, the family has travelled to places like London, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal. They’ve retailed such labels as Joseph Ribkoff, Simon Chang, Bylyse, Picadilly, and many more from European designers.

But fashion isn’t what it used to be. In fact, you could say fashion is going out of fashion. “We’re a disposable society, a lot of throwaway,” said Ivan.

That is, high fashion is not just about design but the fabric.

“We were probably the No. 1 seller of Linda Lundstrom fashion in the city and to this day, 25 years later, people still wear those coats and get complimented and come in here and say, ‘Ivan, it’s the best thing I ever bought from you.’”

While clothes go out of fashion, clothes made from good fabric keep resurfacing.

“You can take a piece that’s come out today and put it together with another piece from five years ago,” said Rita.

As for being in business with his mother, Ivan says he’s been part of a family retail business since he was old enough to walk. “My whole life has been surrounded in fashion and retail and family,” he said.

“We all get along well,” said Rita. “We’ve never had a falling out. I guess we’re not normal.”

The store’s closure was prompted when someone made an offer on the building, said Rita. The sale is still pending but the prospective owners plan to renovate the building for medical offices, she said.

With an offer in hand, the family just thought it was time to close.

Closing out sales have already begun but it will be a long goodbye extending for about five months.

“Because of our longstanding commitment to our manufacturers and agents, we didn’t feel it was right to cancel the spring and summer collections,” Ivan said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca