After 31 years in fashion, Rejeanne is going out in style

Over the years, Rejeanne Hergott heard her customers’ stories as she Mulberry Bag helped them pick out their outfits.

They came to her shop, Rejeanne’s Boutique, at Eby and King Streets in downtown Kitchener, as excited young women dressing for the high school prom.

They came as brides and as mothers of the bride or groom, nervously preparing for the big day.

They came for the perfect outfit for the big job interview, the business dinner, or jeans and jacket to wear on a trip.

The trendy but classic styles at Rejeanne’s served all of those occasions and some difficult ones. Hergott often helped women battling serious illness find outfits that made mulberry handbag them look and feel their best.

Now, Rejeanne’s Boutique, an institution in Kitchener’s core for 31 years, is getting ready to close.

Hergott, who is lively and energetic at the age of 73, says she and her husband Jim, who has been her right hand man at her shop for years, want to enjoy a retirement together while they are still healthy. “Last year, after we celebrated 50 years of marriage, we decided it was time,” she says.

Born in Quebec and raised in Timmins, she came to Kitchener in 1959 at the age of 21. She saw a sign for hairdressing school and decided she would like to do that. She also fell in love and married Jim.

Hergott started as a hairdresser, initially out of a salon off of Ottawa Street. But she loved fashion. She began to sell accessories from her salon, and gradually got out of hairdressing to focus on women’s fashions.

On June 1, 1980, she moved her business into a house at Eby and King Streets. Rejeanne’s Boutique was born. “I already had clientele, from the hairdressing business,” she says.

She carried unique but quality classic items that were versatile. She catered to her customers’ tastes for conservative elegance, but Hergott was also known for getting them to try something new and different.

“Sometimes, when I was buying in Quebec, I would pick something a little bit wild and people would say, ‘Oh, Rejeanne, you will never sell that in Kitchener.’” But she did.

Hergott built her business as other downtown retailers lost customers to the malls on the outskirts of the city.

“This has always been a Mulberry bag sale shopping destination,” she explains. Her customers came from far and wide. “I had a customer who was a teacher in Woodstock. Pretty soon, I had other teachers from Woodstock in here.” The styles she carried also appealed across generations of mothers and daughters.

Hergott knew her customers and could point out items they would like. “When you come to a boutique, you get a little bit spoiled,” she says.

Her shop carried a lot of Simon Chang, her favourite designer. “Of course, a lot of the fashion labels are retired now. Susan Bristol is gone, Roui is gone,” she says.

Hergott loved going to the fashion shows in Quebec and Toronto to buy for the next season.

She saw trends come, go, and come back. “In the 1980s, it was a lot of country and long, peasant skirts,” she says. “There were always suits, but then jackets were long with padded shoulders. In the last few years, the jackets have been short. Now they are long again,” she says.

Hergott was also involved in many charitable fashion shows such as Oktoberbest’s A Blooming Affair and the St. Mary’s Hospital Festival of Trees for years.

Recessions were tough, but she took the economic cycles in stride. “You do feel it when there is recession. But then I can show them a blouse to make an old outfit look new again.”

Hergott is now selling her inventory. There is no set closing date but the business will wind down over the summer.

She hopes to do some volunteering in retirement. She and Jim plan to spend more time at their cottage. She would like to play more bridge.

Hergott says she is looking forward to retirement, but will miss her customers. “I have enjoyed every minute of it, I really have. I have made good friends here over the years.”