There are plenty of things you might expect to find in a deserted back-alley: discarded junk, old tires, perhaps a rodent or two. Chances are, though, that “menswear boutique” wouldn’t be high on that list. After three and a half years on Toronto’s main shopping strip, owner Matt Robinson made the unconventional decision to move his shop, Klaxon Howl, into the far corner of a dusty alleyway.

To some, the relocation seemed ludicrous – but it couldn’t have turned out to be more perfect. The reconverted 19^th century coach house – chockfull of rustic, quirky charm – provides the ideal setting for Klaxon Howl’s eclectic mix of vintage workwear and military apparel, alongside its exceptional private label.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the store itself is the enthusiasm of its owner. A conversation with Robinson reveals not only his extensive historical knowledge of the goods he hawks, but also his undeniable passion for his craft.

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Literally speaking, a “Klaxon Howl” is the sound made by an electromechanical horn. How was that chosen as the name of the store?

It came off a long list of names. This is our third store, so we knew what to expect. The “Klaxon” part came off of some liner notes from a Clash album, Sandinista, so I’d spied that and written it down. The “Howl” part was actually a sort of play on like Thurston Howell, like somebody’s name. So a lot of people think Klaxon Howl is a name, or they say “Klaxon” and “Howl” like it’s two different people’s names.

But yeah, the Klaxon was an old horn technology that you’d hear on ships, submarines, old Model Ts, the Tin Lizzies. It’s that real distinctive Ahyoooogah!

When you were first conceptualizing the store, what was the aesthetic or vibe that you aspired to?

It was something that had been growing in my head for a while. I’d been collecting military stuff for probably a good three or four years before we actually opened the shop, so it was something that sort of grew out of that.

There was actually a dream that I had, where I went in this place –it wasn’t as curated as something like this – but basically it was a store where every rack I went through was just the best military stuff, the best vintage, and piles of it. Things that you just don’t see – you’re lucky to find one piece in a mess of everything. It was kind of a dream idea of having a place where you would come and see things you normally wouldn’t see, and sort of see it in abundance and be able to touch it and look at it.

The original concept was to mix lines that were inspired by these things with the real vintage pieces. Now, it’s sort of diverted from that into us doing our private label, us doing the things that we want to do, and select vintage pieces and a couple of heritage brands. But when it started we were thinking of things like WTAPS and MHI, and we’d stock brands like Stone Island, and AK from Burton – so it was things that kind of touched on those things – some new school stuff, some heritage stuff. But it’s definitely gotten away from that now, which I prefer. I think it’s got more legs this way – us doing our own thing definitely gives people exclusive product.

So with your private label, can you describe the design process, the manufacturing, and all that’s involved with it?

We start with an idea – sometimes it can be taken from an actual garment, it can be taken from a photograph, something I’ve seen in a film. We reference all kinds of things. It’s usually classic pieces, or films that I’m watching. I watch a lot of TCM, so I’m watching all sorts of films from the silent era right up to the 70s – a lot of them are period pieces. It also comes from looking at items I’ve seen, I have, or wish I had – same with going through reference books. It’s sort of like sampling music, you know, you’ll like a pocket detail here, but maybe not the pocket detail, or the fits off.

So we’re just sort of pulling pieces. Sometimes it’s completely literal; we’ll copy it exactly, but tweak the fit, because a lot of the older fits are not intended for contemporary wear. A lot of people wear their shirts un-tucked, but real older shirt tails are quite long – they’re meant to be tucked in and stay tucked in, so they’re cut for that and don’t quite work. So we tweak things, but some of the other fits – things like high armholes, tighter shoulders, that kind of military fit – we definitely hold on to and carry over.

That’s pretty much the process. We work with our patterns, and do all the stuff ourselves. We use old machines for construction – chain stitch machines, bar tacking, gusseting, and everything’s made with interlocking flat felt seams. Just things that a lot of people don’t do anymore.

Is almost everything done around here?

Yeah, it’s all done in the city. We have an atelier in the back, where we start the process. The patterns are usually done by our pattern maker – we tweak the pattern, she grades the patterns. The design process is obviously all done here, and then manufacturing is all done here in the city as well.

The fabric all comes from Canada, some stuff from the States. We use vintage fabrics when we can, vintage notions (notions being buttons), zippers, snaps, things like that. Whenever we can get that sort of stuff we definitely use it. All the shirts we’ve made to date have had vintage buttons on them.

So it seems like a lot of your inspiration comes from the early to mid 20th Century.

Yeah, definitely.

What about that era appeals to you the most?

It was definitely less label-driven. A lot of these things didn’t even have labels, or if they did have labels they were meant to be removed, or they would disintegrate with one wash – you know, paper labels, cheesecloth labels. It wasn’t really about the brand; it was more about the quality. Things were made a little more earnestly. Things were meant to last. The fabrics were pretty modest. It was pre-synthetics – it was cottons, wools, linens, and mixes like that.

Also the styling – sportswear didn’t really exist until probably post-World War II, at least what we think of as North American sportswear. And a lot of those pieces are military pieces. That whole American sportswear look came from soldiers returning home after the war. The chino is definitely a military issue item that they incorporated into their civilian wardrobe when they got back home.

You’ve got to remember that the majority of the male population during the Second World War was in uniform, so during war years they weren’t producing civilian clothes on the same scale. Suddenly you’ve got all these returning men who need clothes, so there were shortages. Levi’s were a much sought-after commodity – people were lining up to get them, whenever they were available they were selling out. People would write letters to Levi’s begging for pairs. It was hard to get stuff post-World War II. So, you know, it was the leather aviator jacket, the leather A2 jacket, white t-shirt, aviator glasses, service shoes…

It’s kind of like the Marlon Brando look.

Yeah, yeah – even in A Streetcar Named Desire, if you look at the clothes he’s wearing, he’s mixing those pieces. That’s the thing, too – I’ll watch a film like On the Waterfront and I’ll be picking out things like US Navy deck jackets or M-41 jackets.

Chambray shirts make up a large part of the store’s collection, and the fabric seems to have had resurgence lately…

Oh, yeah. It’s pretty trendy right now.

Yeah, it seems like it’s everywhere right now. What do you think gives the material its appeal?

Well, it’s a fabric that was used in work wear shirts and the US Navy. Their shirts, other than the wool shirts, were all chambray or plain-weave poplin which is another fabric we use – our heritage poplin. Those fabrics, those are pieces I collect, hence I reference them. But we’ve been doing it for four years, the chambray thing…

It’s really started taking off in the last little while. It’s crazy.

Same with chinos – we’ve been trying to push chinos for the longest time. I remember people making jokes about chinos, like, [puts on funny voice] “Eh, you can’t go anywhere in chinos!” And now everyone’s on the chino tip.

[Laughs] Is that kind of gratifying for you?

I dunno if it’s gratifying, but… [laughs]

I mean, I’ve been coming to this store for a while now, but it’s suddenly been popping up a lot on a bunch of blogs lately.

Yeah, it’s been getting a little bit of love on the Internet for sure. But then I don’t know if that’s one person mentioning it, and then everyone’s looking at that particular blog. I don’t know what started it. We’ve kind of being doing our own thing for awhile, and we’ve only had our website for less than a year, so it’s sort of organically mushrooming.

Yeah, definitely. So a lot of people lately have been talking about getting back to this vision of “traditional American style”. Do you think there’s a distinctive Canadian style that’s separate from that at all?

I think it definitely crosses over. I find Canadian pieces, I find American pieces. Definitely in the military, there’s a very distinct difference between American military pieces and Canadian. But there’s also some crossover – like the US Navy Marine Corps flight jacket, the G1. There’s a Canadian version of that that was issued to the Royal Canadian Navy for the fleet air arm – for pilots that flew off of aircraft carriers – so there is some crossover there. We have our own version of the deck jacket that’s really popular, so there are pieces. The Americanite jacket came from the British and Canadian battle dress.

So yeah, there are some similarities, but for the most part they are very distinct kind of things, so you can definitely see it. Or at least I can. [Laughs.] To most people a green army jacket is a green army jacket. And then for sportswear, yeah, there are definitely parallels.

Is having a Canadian identity important to the store at all?

I wouldn’t say it’s so much Canadian, I wouldn’t say that. To say that a flannel or check shirt is a Canadian thing, that’s definitely not true…

But I mean in terms of the importance of using Canadian fabrics and constructing pieces locally…

Yeah, well I want to keep things in North America. The industry here is waning, so it’s nice to be able to contribute to its longevity, because a lot of manufacturers have gone tits up since they dropped all the tariffs and quotas for importing from places like China and India. The floodgates sort of opened.

I’ve been in retail for a long time and I remember when there were certain things that we wanted to bring in from lines that we bring in because they didn’t meet the quotas for that particular country. It used to be they could only import a certain amount of stuff under each heading, like, Oven Mitts, Babies’ Clothes, Rain Jackets, Men’s Pants, Men’s Shirts…those sort of things. Each of those things had a limit and if it met those, then you weren’t getting them, which was usually the case.

That must’ve been really frustrating.

Yeah, kinda. When you see something that’s cool you’d go, “Oh, that’s cool! Oh, it’s made in Macau. Oh, alright, we can’t bring that in. So it was frustrating. But now it’s the opposite, I would rather have it back that way. As appealing as lower margins and higher profits are, I would rather make everything here in Canada and the United States, and buy from Canadian and American companies.

[Gestures to vintage pieces around him.] A lot of these clothes were very regional and local. Every small town or area would have its own woolen mills, its own boot maker, its own denim maker. If you lived in Pennsylvania, you wore these kinds of clothes because they were usually just made there. The west coast definitely had it’s own thing going on…

That’s what I was just reading about Levi’s, that they were only on the west coast for a long time.

Yeah, Lee was in a certain area, and Wrangler, and then all the other little guys that you see that have sort of gone on the wayside. Those are the big three that people still remember and are still around doing stuff, but every little town and every region would have their own manufacturer of everything – milliners that would make hats, and shoemakers, and all that.

Almost all of those things in Canada are gone. The United States is a little bit better. There are still companies, like woolen mills that are still making things. There are shoemakers like Alden, or Russell Moccasins, still a family-owned business, still making shit, or Dayton Boots in Canada, still doing their thing. But it used to be in abundance, now it’s not so much.

So I have to say, very few people would choose to move their storefront off a main street into a back alley. Obviously it’s given the store a measure of authenticity and character, but was it risky at all business-wise?

Oh yeah, for sure. There was a definite worry as to whether it was going to work or not, but there are other places in the world where very successful boutiques are more hidden away than this one. We’re not really that far off the beaten path. We’re maybe, what, 25 meters from Queen St.? Like a quarter of a block? It’s not very far, and it’s got access off of two streets. Our other shop, Delphic, is right on the northeast corner, so there are definitely referrals from there. The fact that we were already in business for three and a half years was helpful as well; we’d already established a customer base. But saying that, we’re still getting new people in – things like these bloggers saying kind things, or the article we got in The New York Times, and other local press have definitely helped to bring people in and increase our customer base. So yeah, it’s good – it’s growing, but not too fast.

It must be fun back here too, kind of like a clubhouse.

It is – it’s totally a clubhouse back here. The temperature’s a little bit cooler, the air is just a little bit fresher, not being right on Queen St. with all the cars…

[Laughs.] It sort of feeds right into that whole tree fort mentality.

Yeah, it’s definitely got that feeling. You look out in the back laneway and nature’s sort of growing out of every crack and out of every fence. I’ve had squirrels walk through here. A cat walks through here. I’ve had a couple pigeons. I’ve had a robin. There’s fucking spiders and bugs all over the place. We’ve got a wood-burning stove. There’s definitely a connection to the outdoors even though we’re right smack in the middle of the city.

We had a customer come through who was like, “Oh, it reminds of me Hawaii.” I hadn’t it really thought of it, and I sort of looked out, and it was a summer day, and it was a little humid, with that kind of jungle sort of feel with flowers growing out of the fences. I was kind of like “Wow, I’ve never been to Hawaii, but I can sort of see what you’re talking about…”

It probably feels the exact opposite in the dead of winter – it’d be more like a log cabin in here.

Well, we’ll see – we’ve only been here since April, so we’ll see what winter’s like. We’ll be doing a lot of shoveling I’m sure. [Laughs.]

How do you yourself see Toronto’s retail or fashion landscape?

It’s tough. I’ve been doing this since ’93. Our first store was Number Six, and that was definitely a groundbreaking shop. In ’93, style in Toronto was definitely kind of small and not very interesting. It was on some levels – there were definitely subcultures and things that were happening that were exciting, but they were really on a small scale. Access to information was a lot different then. The Internet wasn’t what it is now. Technology wasn’t the same. Real estate hadn’t boomed. Immigration hadn’t spiked like it has in the last little while. So I’ve been there from that time till now.

Our first store was 250 sq. feet, and it stocked a bunch of English and Streetwear lines that nobody had ever heard of. We were selling dead stock Adidas old school shell-toes; that whole thing hadn’t blown up yet, it was still very underground. We’d mix British Paul Smith suits with spray tips and graffiti mags and videos and mix-tapes. It was a real sort of eclectic mix of things that all seemed to sort of fit. All things that were relevant at the time, and kind of underground. The American Streetwear stuff was sort of rooted in the rave, hip-hop, skate culture, while the British stuff was more about Mod revivalism, but they mixed really well.

It’s funny, but it sort of seems like Toronto’s entire menswear market is centered on two Matts – you, and Matt George.

Yeah, we’ve both been doing it so long. I remember when Matt first started his running shoe business, and it was just online. He’d drive down to Chicago and fill his Volvo up and come back and hustle his Dunks out of the trunk of his car.

But that’s how it starts – you have a dream and a passion for something and make it happen. It’s interesting to see how it’s all changed. Even style-wise, all that stuff has changed. All those kids who were gagging for that steez of matching your printed graphic tees to your kicks, a lot of those guys have gone away from that…

…And veered in this direction, it seems like. [Laughs.]

[Laughs.] Yeah, yeah…oddly enough.

 Where do you find most of the vintage stuff in the store? Like even just the little knick-knacks in the counter?

Anywhere I can. I’m a real scrounger, so I’m always looking. Like I said, I’ve been doing it for a while. I was collecting long before the store was open, buying things for myself personally, buying things for the collection, buying things to reference for design. That’s kind of where it started, actually — from the years I’d been in the retail game, seeing pieces that I’d recognize from my previous life in the military, and growing up sort of around all this stuff, and military stuff always being in the mix of the different subcultures I’d been a part of.

So wait, you were in the military yourself at one point?

Yeah, I went to a military boarding school for three years and then I was in the reserves for a couple years after that. But also just growing up around my grandparents, and everybody from that generation –

That’s kind of where your interest in all this sort of stuff originated.

Yeah, and also just from The Rat Patrol and Hogan’s Heroes, and watching movies on TV and G.I. Joes, that type of thing.

What items would you personally label an essential – the things every man should own?

Depends on what you need in your wardrobe. I kind of believe in building a wardrobe. The way I dress is kind of based on back-story – when I put something on, it’s got a connection to something I’ve already got in my mind. It just makes me happy.

Yesterday, I was wearing some WWII US Navy herringbone twill pants. I just got them, didn’t have them in my collection, and they’re fucking badass. It’s just those little things, you know? I rock those with my WWII US Navy belt, a chambray shirt, a pair of vintage aviators, my US Navy BuShips watch, and I’m like Yeahhhhh! If things have a back-story to them and a feeling, it brings me pleasure.

It’s a different way of dressing – it’s definitely style. It’s not like, “Yeah, I’m wearing this because it’s this label or that.” Each of those things kind of has a feeling, and I think because they are vintage pieces they have a life of their own, just through the fact that they’ve been around for so long. They’re iconic pieces – you see them referenced here and there. They’re definitely not new ideas, but I think because they’re not new ideas there’s sort of a soul to them. There’s something about them that other contemporary pieces don’t hold for me, even if they’re referencing that period. So when I produce my clothes, I’m trying to inject that feeling into it – that feeling of having been there and done that.

So even when all those kids rocking chambray shirts and chinos right now are back to their neon Bapestas, you’ll still be doing what you’re doing.

I don’t know, who knows? I might be on to something else. To say that going forward is hard. Back when I was wearing Nike Wovens, a SSUR shirt, and a Supreme hat, I thought, “Oh yeah, this is the coolest shit in the world.” You know? I was wearing British DPM shorts at the time, too, though…

But there’s definitely an element of timelessness to the stuff in here.

Yeah, we’ve got pieces in here from the 1940s that are definitely still relevant. A 13-button navy pea coat will always be what it is, whether it’s the hottest or most desirable thing or not. There’s denim pieces in here that, in my collecting time, have gone from crazy prices to more affordable prices, and other things that used to be affordable have gone nuts. There are people out there who are walking parallel lines to me. Things we were once into, we’ve seen for a while or sort of moved away from and gone onto something else – but it might not be that far of a leap.

It used to be N-2Bs or N-3Bs – those coyote-furred, US Air Force short and long parkas – were the shit. And now, they’re not nearly as collectable. Things like the 507 Type-2 jackets used to sell for a lot more money, now things like change-button locomotive jackets are a lot more sought-after. Silk-embroidered tour jackets that people used to go nuts for aren’t quite as popular. This Edwardian, sort of 1910s, 1920s, 1930s stuff is really popular at the moment. It goes through changes. Canadian military and WWII stuff is really popular right now with military guys, especially here in Canada. It used to be like Canadian battle dress tunics – you wouldn’t even pick them up. And now, good ones will sell for 600 bucks.

What do you have in mind for the foreseeable future for the store?

Just keep doing what we’re doing. Just keep making things that interest me, or inspire me, and keep doing them honestly and as best I can. It’s that old saying: You aim for the sky, and you hit the streetlight; aim for the streetlight, and you hit the gutter. So I try and do the best that I can, and it usually turns out pretty good.

It might not be perfect, but that’s some of the charm of what we do – it’s not perfect. And a lot of the vintage stuff that you look at wasn’t perfect. I see check woolen or flannel shirts, and the checks don’t match. These days, you’d be like, “The checks don’t match?!”  [Laughs.] But they didn’t think about it. It was stuff for working in, and once in awhile you might get one that didn’t match. The pocket wouldn’t match, or the stitch was irregular.

You can see that in a lot of the lines that are trying to reproduce that – doing running stitching on purpose, or uneven, crooked stitching, trying to recreate that older construction style. I don’t do those things, but when referencing our stuff we definitely try to do it as authentically as possible. I could pull out a chambray shirt from 1940 and compare it to one of ours, and show you the same details, and similar construction techniques and notions and things like that. I try to get it as bang on as I can. They’re not reproductions, because they’re our own interpretations of them, but they’re pretty fucking close.

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For more information on Klaxon Howl, click here.