Studio Fitzroy Dress Rentals is like your stylish best friend’s closet. And if anyone should know what such a closet looks like, it’s owners Angela Pastor and Julie Buczkowski – the two have been best friends since kindergarten and have always loved fashion. Angela has a background in wardrobe styling while Julie used to work for a fashion PR agency. Running a business together is as fun as it gets for these two peas in a pod.
“People always say we finish each other’s sentences,” Angela says with a smile. “People often think we're sisters or they mix us up. Julie just had a baby so she’s not here right now, but people come in and they’ll say, ‘You just had a baby like two months ago, why are you here?’ They just think that we’re one person – it’s funny.”
Many may already know “the twins” from their former pop-up shops and their online store Fitzroy Boutique, which launched in 2011. The two had been moving around the city over the years, from Yorkville to the back of Queen West’s BYOB Cocktail Emporium to Ossington. But in 2016 they decided to sashay away from selling clothing in favour of becoming an exclusive dress rental studio, with a permanent location in Little Portugal.
“We noticed that with the dresses, we were getting so many requests for pulls for shoots or people asking, ‘Oh, I need a dress for an event, can I borrow?’ and that kind of thing,” explains Angela. “Or people didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the super fun pieces because they felt like ‘Oh, I’m only going to wear it once, I don’t want to spend $200.’” They tested out the rentals at their summer pop-up on Ossington and gained a massive response so, in October, they slowly said goodbye to Fitzroy Boutique and officially said hello to Studio Fitzroy Dress Rentals.
