DIAMOND VALLEY - In his trademark boots, jeans and button-down shirt, Cam Rooney looks like he walked straight out of an early 1950s clothing ad.
What you wear is an outline of who you are, Rooney says.
“I always feel like myself with a tucked in shirt and pair of jeans, (and) some nice boots.”
A self-described curator of vintage clothing, Rooney says he got hooked on the quality as he learned how clothing used to be made.
“Everything was made with more care,” he says.
He’s turned his love of vintage clothing into a thriving business.
Around four years ago, he began putting clothes from his own collection on a rack at Bertie’s General Store in Diamond Valley.
“I couldn't find anywhere that I like to shop, so I thought to myself, ‘Why not just make something?’”
He sold one piece, and then another, and realized he was on to something.
“I kind of sold my whole closet,” he says.
He started Wild North Trading Co., selling men’s vintage clothing from the store on Government Road.
“I had to go buy more stuff, and then it just started rolling.”
Rooney soon realized he had to figure out how to keep it up, and part of that meant going on the hunt.
He doesn’t source any of his clothing by thrifting, instead counting on networking skills gained from his sales and marketing background.
He meets someone, and they know someone, and “you’re just following that whole path,” he says.
The quest for the perfect piece has taken Rooney from Minnesota to northern Alberta and beyond.
Currently he has clothes for sale that span decades, from a 1920s-era denim coat all the way up to things from the late ’80s.
“My kind of rule, that's always been from day one, is that if I don't wear it, I won't sell it.”
One of his favourite finds, a 1960s Lee Stormrider jacket, came from someone just outside of Vancouver.
Closer to home, in Diamond Valley, he came across a 1940s Levi’s Type I jacket.
“That's like the Holy Grail of vintage, is this jacket,” Rooney says, “and this gentleman in Black Diamond had it.”
Gems are out there, and it’s just a matter of time, he says.
Operating in Diamond Valley is a perfect match for Rooney, who hails from Calgary.
“I really like, for one, the clientele and then, two, the people around here that I can kind of pick their stuff.”
Locally, he finds a mix of vintage western wear and biker clothing, and sells it out of the oldest original building in Black Diamond.
Built in 1910, the building became a general store in 1921 and has been owned by the Blakeman family for three or four generations, Rooney says.
It was called Blakeman’s Store back then, and in the 1950s they sold new GWG clothing.
GWG, or Great Western Garment Co., is a well-known name among vintage clothing and denim enthusiasts, and GWG items often pass through Rooney’s shop.
The brand was started in Edmonton in the early 1900s. GWG made denim and western wear, eventually being bought by Levi’s in the 1970s, although still operating under the GWG name until the early 2000s.
These days, people can buy vintage items from the same brand, in the same location.
In fact, Rooney has an original invoice, dated 1959, for clothes the store ordered from GWG.
“The people here (in Diamond Valley) are just — I think they're proud of what we've turned the shop into, because it's super similar to what they did back then,” he says.
Bertie’s General Store also carries women’s vintage clothing and other retro items, like vinyl records, as well as handmade apothecary products.
The clothing Rooney looks for is decades old and often tells a story about its past owner.
There can be markings on a pair of pants from where countless matches were struck, or the outline of overalls baked into a sun-faded shirt.
“I think it’s a folk art,” he says.
He also collects plenty of stories from those who he sources clothing from. Whenever he is looking at a jacket or shirt, his favourite question to ask is how the owner got it in their hands.
“When I first got into it, I was actually more shocked with how much I'd fallen in love with the story aspect of the clothes.”
It usually leads to stories about the owner's grandpa, great grandpa or their dad, he says. “And we’re just sitting at the kitchen table, crying about these stories.”
In fact, he says his wife tells him to write some of the stories down.
“Her joke is that I should have a coffee table book of all my special pieces that I found,” he says. It would include a story and photo for each item.
Rooney became interested in vintage clothing for its quality, and says that still exists in new clothing today, if someone is willing to hunt for it.
He describes his style as vintage or modern heritage clothing.
There are a few reasons people are drawn into the world of vintage clothing, he says.
One road is the sustainability of buying used clothes, but that mindset comes with a catch, he says.
“I think if you're always, just every week, going to a used clothing store and buying something, you're still continuously buying things.”
He advocates maybe spending a little more on fewer, better made items, and just wearing them.
“I think the way to help sustainability is to just buy something quality made, and then just wear it.”
Additionally, his customers include collectors, who treat clothing as art, and people who want something to match a vintage car or motorcycle.
Most of his customers, like himself, are “getting way more into how things are made, the quality of it,” he explains.
Much of the clothing was made in Canada or the United States, before economic conditions caused companies to outsource their production overseas.
Another thing about vintage denim is that, for many, the more faded, the better.
Rooney pulls out two very similar Lee denim jackets, one faded and one deadstock, meaning it’s old but never worn, and says the faded one is more in demand.
“The guys that shop here, they have a different mentality. They're wearing this stuff until it's gone.”
Buying quality clothing, whether it’s new or vintage, and fixing it up if needed, makes sense in the long run, he says.
“I think vintage and quality is expensive, but that’s why I promote ‘you just buy this once.’”
He’s thinking about one day making his own vintage-inspired clothing, with a different mentality around the way people shop.
“If you buy a jacket from me, you can’t buy another jacket,” he says. “I want people to just wear their clothes.”
He admits it’s a weird mentality and a strange way to shop.
“I just don’t want you buying another jacket, because it defeats the whole purpose of buying the jacket in the first place.”
Instead, he would offer repairs, and maybe a discount on a new jacket when the current one can’t be fixed anymore.
Vintage should be more about simplicity than anything, he says.
“(In the past) they never worried what clothes they wore,” he says. “If something ripped, they’d stitch it up and fix it.”
He lives in Calgary, but Rooney loves working in the Foothills and Diamond Valley.
There is a community of businesses that promote each other and help each other out, for the benefit of everyone, he says.
“This building’s up for sale and we always talk, you know, if this building sold tomorrow, we would look for a new spot in the Foothills.
“The clientele, for one, is awesome. People from the city are coming out here — it's growing so much, even in the four years that I've been settled here.”
Lately, he has had to work much harder to keep the racks full in his corner of the shop.
The last year has been the busiest that the store has ever been, he says.
“I’m so picky on what I buy (for the store), but I need to fill my stuff because it’s going so fast.”
