[URBAN NOTE] "Stollerys at Yonge and Bloor gets an A for missed opportunity"

[rfmcdonald]

Karen von Hahn's Toronto Star article criticizing vintage men's clothing store Stollerys, located squarely on the southwest corner of Yonge and Bloor, for a slew of missed opportunities is sadly on target.

The store has received only two stars out of a possible five on Yelp, many of the commenters singling out service as an issue.

For a local landmark that is hardly a discount store (Stollerys stocks and sells quite pricey, suppliers-to-Her-Majesty type goods such as Barbour jackets, Daks and Aquascutum raincoats, Viyella shirts, socks by Pantherella and Derek Rose silk pyjamas) it is hard to fathom a window display in 2014 featuring men’s slacks on torso-less mannequins shod only in dirty beige socks, and topped with cashmere sweaters in place of heads. Or dress shirts stapled to pale wood Grand & Toy wall dividers adorned with cut-out squares of coloured bristol board, as if from a science project made by a child in Grade 5 some years ago.

In fact, the windows look a lot like those of Honest Ed’s, except that Honest Ed’s sells jackets for $14.99, not two-ply cashmeres for hundreds of dollars.

As a proud supporter of small independent and local retail (heaven knows this is an ever-shrinking category given the pressures of advancing global retail chains and shrinking margins), I have nonetheless made an effort to pop into Stollerys on occasion, comparison shopping for, say, a “good” men’s overcoat, or in search of a father’s day gift.

On one of these occasions, I bumped directly into an exiting Lloyd Robertson, former news anchor at CTV. Two thoughts immediately came to mind: first that he looks a lot taller on television; and then, I guess that’s who shops here, men whose job is to look reliably inoffensive, like news anchors.

While I wish I could say that once you get inside the store things look a lot better, this is not the case.

The first thing that greets you by the entrance is the kind of pants press they have in the closets of mid-level motels. Said press is at the landing of some really ugly ’80s Victorian pine stairs. In front of the stairs is a modular arrangement of scuffed Lucite cubbies jammed with cellophane-wrapped dress shirts. On the wall behind this ragged display hangs a rainbow of solid satin ties in disturbingly bright colours.