About

What Deneuve
actually does.

We buy vintage clothing that needs work. We repair it, we alter it, then we sell it. That is the whole business. We have been doing it since 1999.

We do not just flip vintage

A lot of shops buy a jacket at a market, steam it, hang it up, and triple the price. Nothing about the jacket changed. Only the tag did.

We buy the pieces those shops pass on. Torn linings, dead zips, moth holes, split seams, sleeves cut for a body shape nobody has now. Then we put the work in. Every piece on our rail has been on the bench. If we cannot fix a piece properly, we do not buy it, and if we get it wrong and cannot fix it, we do not sell it.

This means we carry less stock than a normal vintage shop. That is the trade. One person can only sew so much in a week.

What happens to a piece

  1. We buy it

    Estate sales, house clearances, rag houses, and people who bring things in. We look at cloth and construction first. Good wool, real linen, proper seams, enough fabric in the seams to let out. Damage is fine. Bad cloth is not.

  2. We wash it

    Everything is cleaned before it is touched. Some of it has been in a loft for thirty years. Wool gets a specialist clean, not a machine.

  3. We write down the damage

    Every fault gets listed before any work starts. That list is what ends up in the product description, so you can see what was wrong and what we did.

  4. We repair it

    Darning, reweaving, patching, new zips, new linings, rebuilt pockets, re-stitched seams. Some repairs are meant to disappear. Some are meant to be seen. We say which is which in the listing.

  5. We alter it

    Most of this work. Old clothes were cut for other people. Shoulders sit wrong, waists sit high, sleeves are short, trousers are cut for a fit nobody wears now. We recut so the piece works on a body today, without wrecking what makes it good.

  6. We press it and measure it

    Every piece is properly pressed, then measured flat. Those measurements go in the listing. We do not guess a size.

Sizing

Vintage sizing is useless on its own. A 1960s size 12 is not a size 12 now, and two 1970s jackets both marked 40 can be two inches apart. So we ignore the label.

Every listing has flat measurements in inches: chest, waist, hip, shoulder, sleeve, and length, whichever apply. Measure something you already own and like the fit of, then compare. That works far better than guessing your vintage size.

If a piece is close but not right, ask before you buy. We can often take it in further. We cannot always let it out, because that depends on how much fabric is sitting in the seams, and we will tell you straight if there is not enough.

How we grade condition

These are the words we use in listings. They mean the same thing every time.

Excellent
Repaired and altered, and you would not know it had ever been damaged. No wear left that you can see.
Good
Sound and wearable. Light wear somewhere, and we say where. Nothing that will get worse.
Honest wear
Visible age. Faded patches, softened cuffs, a mend you can see. Structurally fine. Priced for it.
Visibly mended
The repair is part of the piece. Sashiko, contrast darning, a patch we did not try to hide. On purpose.

What we will not do

  • Sell a piece we could not repair properly.
  • Hide a repair. If we mended it, the listing says so and where.
  • Cut into a piece that should be left alone. Some things are better sold as they are, to someone they already fit.
  • Call something vintage when it is not. If it is 1990s, we say 1990s. If we are unsure of the decade, we say we are unsure.
  • Buy synthetic fast fashion, however old it is.

Your own clothes

We take in repairs and alterations on things you already own. Same bench, same people. Bring it in and we will fit it on you and give you a price before anything is cut. Most alterations take three days. Bigger rebuilds take about two weeks.

We are good at old clothes specifically. If you have something inherited, something from a charity shop that nearly fits, or something you have had for twenty years and worn through, that is the work we like most.

Book it in See the shop

Where we are

128 Rue Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, QC.
Open Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00. Saturday, 11:00 to 17:00. Closed Sunday and Monday.

+1 (514) 555-0142
bench@deneuve.example