Ripped to Shreds is ready to hit the runway

Even though it’s been a nearly two-year odyssey bringing Ripped to Shreds to life, the last few days before this weekend’s opening have felt like a crush for Courtney L. Hall. There are mirrors that need to be hung in the dressing rooms. More than 600 T-shirts still need to be priced. And on the early October afternoon when we spoke, painters had just exited the shop after completing final touch-ups.

“One thing I’m learning is that most of the small business owners that I’ve talked to are just like, ‘Yeah, you’ll go from an empty room to a store in a week,” said Hall, who will celebrate the opening of the secondhand/vintage clothing shop at 2503 Summit St. from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11. The shop is located directly across the street from Used Kids, whose owner, Greg Hall (no relation), is a partner in the new business. “And that’s definitely how it feels. And it makes me have a lot of love and respect for people who are doing their own thing, and who are doing it as DIY as we are here, where it barely looked like a store two weeks ago … and now it’s nearly functioning.”

All of the customizations and final touches – Hall said the night before she had been in her garage spray painting outlet covers for the shop – have extended from the bigger, more conceptual questions the business owner began asking herself a couple years back: What is the ethos of Ripped to Shreds? What is the brand identity? What items would they stock? What won’t they stock?

In developing the concept, Hall leaned on her extensive work history in resale shops, which began at a Goodwill boutique in downtown Madison, Wisconsin, and most recently included a three-year stint at the now-shuttered Rag-O-Rama in Clintonville. “And I really feel like my finishing school in retail management was that tour at Rag-O-Rama during Covid,” said Hall, who stepped away from her management position when her child, Ozzy, was born. “And coincidentally, Ozzy is the start of the story to how I connected with Greg [Hall].”

As a toddler, Hall said, Ozzy became enamored with the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” Not long after, Hall’s partner, the musician Joe Camerlengo, discovered a VHS copy for sale at Used Kids via the store’s Instagram page, which he had held for Hall to pick up. In the midst of the transaction, Hall, a musician and artist, struck up a conversation with the record store clerks in which they discussed the closure of Rag-O-Rama. 

Having overheard the exchange, Greg Hall then reached out to see if Courtney might be interested in helping him to price and/or sell the stock of 600+ metal, punk, and rock T-shirts he had accrued over the years in running the record shop. These discussions eventually flowered into the creation of Ripped to Shreds, which joins Greg Hall’s growing portfolio alongside Used Kids and the recording studio Musicol, which he acquired in another deal earlier this year. (In a nod to this connection, Courtney Hall repurposed lockers from the famed studio as an in-store display unit at Ripped to Shreds.)

In many ways, Greg Hall’s T-shirt collection served as the soil in which the resale shop’s identity took root, further influenced by Courtney Hall’s personal tastes and the music playlist she assembled to listen to as she worked (heavy on indie-sleaze). “And as I was sourcing things, I was really trying to envision my customer,” said Hall, who also pulled inspiration from the early NYC boutique run by Patricia Field and a pair of legendary London stores founded by Vivian Westwood: Let It Rock and Sex, the latter of which helped give birth to the Sex Pistols. “And the overall vibe started to come together really quickly, where it was ’70s CBGB and early New York zine culture. … And in curating things, I started really working with that rock and roll vibe.”

Hall also approached the business with an acute awareness of sustainability informed by the years she worked in the fashion industry. In addition to forgoing plastics (the shop is using wood hangers, plain black paper bags for purchases, and fastening clothing with safety pins and thread), Hall has plans to host sessions on mending clothing, hoping to move people away from the idea that items have to be tossed if they’re ripped or torn.

Perhaps most important, though, is the focus Courtney has placed on developing community around the store, which she attributed in part to an early conversation with Greg Hall. “When we first started, when we were in those early talks of, ‘Okay, what if this were a store?’ he immediately was like, ‘Think about what you want to do to speak to your community,’ she said. 

As a means to help foster this conversation, Ripped to Shreds will feature a rack with fashion selections from rotating guest curators (up first is Madeline Jackson of DANA), while on the first Friday of each month the shop plans to invite a different local artisan in to sell their wares. (The event will coincide with Used Kids’ ongoing first Friday free concert series.) Courtney Hall also has plans to host in-shop Sunday morning “runway rewatches,” where visitors can grab coffee from nearby Honey Cup and watch footage of high fashion runway shows. And she wants to coordinate with local musicians to stage merch drops, where bands and artists could debut new T-shirts, hats, etc. ahead of record releases or tours.

“Greg’s the first to say, ‘I’m not a fashion guy,’ but what he does know is how to make people feel like part of his world,” Courtney Hall said. “He knows how to create a community around his shop. … And I wanted to make sure that this shop, being in that Used Kids family, emulated those things as well. I truly think that sense of community is what will set us apart.”