If you’re a Vancouver fashionista, chances are at some point you bought that something special from deLuxe Junk Company—whether it was a fab ’50s clutch to complete your gin-and-sin dress, the perfect army jacket to complement your coloured Docs, or the ideal leather bomber to showcase your faded Ramones T. It’s almost a rite of passage, especially for guys and gals who like their retro accoutrements almost as much as they like their rock ’n’ roll.

In fact, for many, the Gastown clothing boutique is a bit of a Vancouver institution. It was definitely among the first of its kind when Kenny Spada opened deLuxe’s first location 35 years ago. Sadly, Spada won’t see his beloved consignment store reach the 36-year mark. The 66-year-old fashion fanatic passed away in September after battling several health ailments for five long years.

But his partner, Rod Hubic, is determined to keep the store running as though Spada were still in the back room teaching his staff the subtle differences between an authentic ’40s zoot suit and a cheap ’70s reproduction.

“It’s like he’s still here,” says Hubic, who sat down with the Straight in the cluttered heart and soul of deLuxe, where clothes are sorted, steamed, and tagged before going out on the floor. “It’s really freaky. He’s just not here physically. But everything is so him.”

Hubic, who’s only been back at work for a month, met and fell in love with Spada in 1994. He may have missed the first 21 years of deLuxe, but after living and working with Spada for 14 years, he can recount episodes from the store’s heyday as though he lived them himself.

As Hubic recalls, it all started with Spada taking a road trip from Toronto to Vancouver in 1973: “He bought or rented this wonderfully cool van he named Ruby the Red Bullet, and on his way out he collected all kinds of things that suited his tastes—not just clothing but accessories, furniture, lamps, just all kinds of stuff, anything cool. It was one of those global-consciousness things, because vintage didn’t exist at that time. The ’60s was mod—you wanted mod clothing. You did not want anything handed down.”

But the stigma against preloved things was on its way out, and Spada knew it. Soon after setting up that first shop in Gastown, he cleared out his furniture stock and relocated to West 4th Avenue. (Back then, Kits was a little more freewheeling and a little less yummy mummy.) Business was so good that he opened a second store on the West Side, where he focused exclusively on clothing and accessories.

During this period, Spada spent most of his time at Vancouver’s one and only rag yard, where donated clothes were processed before being shipped to developing countries.

“In the ’70s, you could come across phenomenal pieces that might be in mint condition,” Hubic says as he digs up a picture of a dapper-looking Spada sifting through heaps of discarded clothing. “You could find Victorian pieces, Edwardian pieces, and ’20s flappers’ dresses that might have needed just a little bit of mending. Nowadays, that just doesn’t happen.”

Enter consignment. The ’80s marked a new era of people sourcing secondhand merchandise. Spada no longer had to spend hours each day hip-deep in church-sale castoffs. People came to him with treasures to resell in exchange for a cut of the profit. It was also the decade when Spada returned to the neighbourhood he adored so much. And for a while, it paid off. With Sears to the west and Woodward’s to the east, there was a lot of walking traffic. Business was good.

Eventually word got out to touring acts that if you wanted to pick up something cool and retro, deLuxe was the place. Hubic wasn’t there at the time, but he remembers Spada telling him about a whirlwind encounter with a certain tabloid disaster.

“Courtney Love came in and just stripped naked,” Hubic says with a laugh. “She just changed in the middle of the store. There was only one shopper in the store but she didn’t care, and Ken didn’t care because he looooved trashy women.”

Other celebs who perused those packed racks of vintage gems over the years include Michael Stipe, Goldie Hawn, and David Arquette, to name just a few.

“It was just so fucking casual,” says Hubic of the chitchat that Spada made with his famous customers. “He didn’t treat anybody special. He was just like, ‘Cool duds you chose there.’ He would just shoot the shit, and people that were of importance really got off on that.”

By the early ’90s, both nearby department stores had folded and things started to slow down for deLuxe. But with several midrange boutiques popping up in the area in the last five years, the little store that could experienced a bit of a resurgence in sales. Of course, that could all change, what with all this talk of economic hard times. That said, no matter what happens, Hubic has no intention of relocating the Gastown institution.

“He loved this area,” Hubic says of Spada. “[He] stuck it out through thick and thin. When there wasn’t anything going on after Woodward’s got taken down and all that shit was going on, we were still here. Both of us, we just love this area—just the attitude, the flavour, and the different mix of people, because that’s kind of like the store. We don’t want to go anywhere.…Our boot heels are firmly dug in these trenches.”

As for dealing with the loss of Spada, Hubic admits that he’s still processing everything.

“It was an intense part of my life. To have your mentor, your father figure, your lover, your best friend, and your work partner gone all at once—it takes a while to get back on track, but I’m getting there. It’s happening. It’s good,” says a somewhat shaky Hubic before reiterating, “It’s all good.”