Granted Clothing and Native Shoes At Sale Prices

Retro chic items from Vancouver’s Granted Clothing and Native Shoes make fashionable and affordable Christmas gifts.

CHEAP + CHIC | Neo-retro fashion is a “time travelling aesthetic”— contemp- orary, eye-catching clothing and accessories with silhouettes and motifs that are vaguely familiar, mostly warm and fuzzy references to true vintage fashions you’ve seen in shops or items you wore when you were younger.

Granted Clothing and Native Shoes are two successful Vancouver companies that design and manufacture outerwear and shoes (respectively) with a neo-retro vibe. Granted makes premium, chunky hand-knit fashions, while Native makes some of the coolest plastic shoes on the planet. Both have a cult following internationally, particularly in Japan where being unfashionable is quite possibly a crime; both have received miles of prestigious fashion ink.

Though no one could accuse Native Shoes of being super expensive, neither Native nor Granted sells inexpensive merchandise, so we were happy to discover some bargains from both companies—things that would make wonderful Christmas gifts for the fashion-forward people in your life.

Granted Clothing: Granted retro chic, locally hand-knit toques and mittens should please hockey fanatics and fashionistas. Right now, these toques are just $30 and mittens are an unbelievably low $20 (that’s 55 percent off the regular price). Granted also has other fashionable hand-knit items on sale. Use this link to order online: www.grantedclothing.com

Native Shoes: Putting their own spin on iconic sneaker lace-up brands—Keds, Converse, Vans—Native Shoes’ hip, EVA-foam-injected moulded material slip-ons are icons themselves and in delicious, vibrant colours (see above). We found Natives styles Jefferson, Miller and Corrado locally for $65 a pair, but online at Canada Zappos they were a mere $36, an irresistible price. Use this link: www.canada.zappos.com —Annabel Lee