Dundas West has long been a bit of a haven for vintage shopping, and the latest addition is no exception. Boomie Vintage has opened a new location at 1191 Dundas St. W., transforming the online shop and pop-up market favourite into a brick-and-mortar collective featuring pieces from 15 independent vintage sellers.
While curated pieces from Boomie founder and owner Meria Mallard make up much of the shop, it’s also a multi-vendor vintage store, with independent sellers are curating their own racks all under one roof. That means the selection is no longer shaped by just one buyer. Each seller brings a different eye, aesthetic, ethic and customer base to the shop, creating a wider variety of styles than Mallard could have sourced on her own. Shoppers can move from rack to rack, just as they might between favourite Depop sellers.
“I thought, I’m going to invite my community to come together for us to open this space,” she says. “It was the best decision.”
The business began on Depop nearly seven years ago, when Mallard was living in New York and collecting vintage clothing faster than she could store it.
R“I started collecting vintage like crazy,” Mallard says. “When I looked in my room, I had four, five, six racks of clothing.”
Mallard did not initially open the account with plans to launch a business. Depop was already a major part of the American and British vintage scenes, and she was interested in connecting with other sellers and seeing how people were turning carefully curated second-hand clothing into online shops.
After spending years successfully working in fashion in her home country, Brazil, she was looking to take some time off in the U.S. Still, vintage offered a new way to stay connected to the industry while moving away from her traditional roots in fashion.
Before Boomie, Mallard studied fashion design and worked for an independent Brazilian designer. She moved away from the design path and into presenting fashion itself. She eventually opened a small agency with a business partner that specialized in fashion brands, offering services such as public relations, social media, events, marketing campaigns, and fashion show production.
From there, Mallard went on to work with Brazilian footwear brand Melissa, known for their jelly shoes and major designer collaborations, including collections with Vivienne Westwood.
Mallard describes working for the international company as an education in how major fashion brands operate.
“Melissa was a school for me,” she says.
The experience gave her an understanding of global marketing, larger budgets and the structures behind a major fashion company. Still, after years in the traditional industry, she was ready for a shift.
That shift began during a sabbatical in New York. As her vintage collection grew, Mallard began listing pieces on Depop and eventually tested the idea in person at a market held at the Williamsburg Hotel.
“The seeds were planted in New York,” she says.
After returning to Brazil, Mallard eventually moved to Toronto shortly before the pandemic. She had previously spent a summer in the city and planned to return for one year to improve her English and reconnect with friends.
Then COVID-19 arrived, and the temporary move became something much more permanent.
While much of the city remained shut down, Mallard began thinking seriously about how she could turn Boomie into a business and continue working in fashion in a much more sustainable way. When outdoor markets began returning, she started selling through Toronto events, with Hippie Market becoming especially important to the growth of the brand.
Mallard regularly participated in the market’s night events in a Dundas Street parking lot, where she met other sellers, attracted new customers and became part of the city’s growing vintage community.
For roughly two and a half years, Mallard sold consistently through markets and online, continuing to build Boomie’s Depop presence while accumulating more inventory. Eventually, the clothing took up enough space that she needed a dedicated studio. She found a small location near Bloor Street West, between Dundas and Lansdowne, that she planned to use for inventory storage and content creation. It was not a typical retail storefront. The space was located in the front room of a house, meaning shoppers had to know exactly where they were going and enter the residence to find the clothing.
Mallard had not intended to operate it as a regular store. Instead, she invited a few friends from Toronto’s vintage market community to bring pieces for a weekend pop-up, hoping their combined audiences would be willing to seek out the unusual location.
“I never thought about having a store open there,” she says. “I would never imagine people would come into the house to shop.”
But Boomie already had an audience through Depop and the city’s markets, and shoppers showed up.
The successful pop-up led Mallard to open the space on occasional weekends. Over time, those openings became more frequent, and Boomie developed from an online shop and market vendor into her full-time business. The hidden studio helped bridge the gap between Depop and physical retail, but Mallard knew the business had eventually outgrown it. She spent more than a year searching for a proper storefront, although moving into a larger space in Toronto came with considerable risk.
“Moving from that small space to a big space was challenging for me,” she says. “Especially being small, because you don’t have that much stock, and rent is very expensive here.”
After struggling to find the right space, Mallard decided she would stop looking and remain in the studio for another year.
Almost immediately afterward, the Dundas West opportunity appeared as if fate itself had intervened.
The new store was already close to move-in ready, required minimal renovation and was situated along a stretch of Dundas known for independent shops and vintage stores. Mallard ultimately closed the previous Bloor and Lansdowne location rather than operating two stores, choosing to focus entirely on the new space, transitioning into a full-time brick-and-mortar retail spot.
Mallard brings a sense of her hometown to Toronto when she says that the retail culture she knew in Brazil placed a major emphasis on making customers feel acknowledged and comfortable, and she has carried that approach into Boomie. The goal is for shoppers to take their time, browse without pressure and gradually build relationships with the store and the sellers whose styles they connect with.
Even Boomie’s name is rooted in its Depop beginnings. Mallard originally wanted to call the business Boomerang Vintage, referencing the idea that what goes around comes around. After discovering that another vintage shop was already using the name somewhere in North America, she shortened it to match the distinctive usernames she always saw on Depop.
What began with an overflowing New York bedroom has now become a permanent fixture of Toronto’s storefronts. Boomie is still rooted in the highly specific curation, independent sellers and a sense of discovery that made vintage shopping on Depop so addictive. The difference is that Toronto shoppers can now try everything on.
