Listed in Fashion Stores
Soop Soop may be housed in a former grocery store but if you visit this vintage clothing shop on Gladstone near Dundas don't expect nutritious broth. When founder Christina Pretti was painting the outside benches before opening last spring she listened in on a group of passing schoolgirls - "I can't wait until this lunch place opens!" "Whoops!" Pretti laughs. "Sorry, guys!"
Now that the store's up and running the teenagers might still like what they see inside, despite the absence of chicken noodle. Pretti offers a carefully curated collection of mid-century work wear, cheeky 1980's blouses, denim jackets, plain t-shirts, and sweatshirts designed with wolves and baseball logos. Along with "reformed" pieces she's adapted and re-sewn, Pretti also sells a house line for women designed by Pigeons & Thread. 
"I studied holistic nutrition," Pretti explains. "When you start thinking about things holistically and how everything has an affect, you just can't not apply it to everything else. And so you start looking at buying clothes differently." 
Realizing there was plenty of perfectly wearable used clothing out there, much of which resembles the new clothes pushed by fast fashion behemoths, she began selling vintage clothing online. The website was designed by her boyfriend, Jordan Puopolo, who co-owns. Her environmentalism even affected how she packaged her orders, usually in old cardboard boxes she lifted from her day job. 
"I don't know what kind of impression that leaves when people receive this tattered, mangled box in the mail," she jokes, but she hopes it makes customers think about how much waste usually goes into packaging. 
Pretti says the shop's name is nonsense, derived from a message about soup written on her apartment's blackboard that, for reasons lost to roommate lore, went un-erased for a long time, ("We know how to spell 'soup', okay? Somebody just closed off the 'u'.") Despite the silly name, the online business took off. Pretti eventually quit her day job and decided to rent a studio space cum storefront so she'd no longer have to meet clients for fittings at Starbucks. 
When designing the shop's atmosphere she wanted to avoid the "old timey antlers and raw wood vibe" created by many Toronto vintage stores. In stead, she went for clean and modern with quirky pop culture touches, like a portrait of 'Saved by the Bell's Zack Morris and a rack of 1950's movie magazines. To create an all round shopping experience she added Scotch Naturals nail polish (eco-friendly, of course) and independent magazines like Bad Day and WORN Fashion Journal, the type of publications you don't throw away after one read. 
As for pricing, Pretti tries to keep it fair. "A lot of it is based on what it's worth, or at least we try to do it that way. Our vintage tees are 10 bucks because, y'know, they're 10 bucks." She goes on a little rant about why anyone would ever have to buy a new plain t-shirt. But the more special a piece, the more it costs. She shows me one of the more pricey items - a polka dotted handkerchief from the 1930's. "People are taken aback sometimes, but these are really rare." She encourages me to touch the soft fabric. "Isn't it fantastic?" 
Soop Soop is open Tuesday-Saturday 12-7pm, Sunday 12-5pm. Photos by James C Lee