Her grandmother's cast-iron sewing machine from the 1940s sits in the centre of an old dining room table, the latest pieces in her spring collection are hanging neatly on a rack, and her raw material - old T-shirts and faded jeans - are neatly stored away.
"It's this whole concept of waste couture," said Munson, who is the owner of Orphanage Clothing Company in the Windsor exchange area of Halifax.
Started in 2003, Munson's business is among an increasing number of fashion labels that are reinventing old clothes by cutting, sewing and recreating them.
"It's getting away from fashion as an expendable commodity and moving toward a sustainable industry, away from the buy-one-and-get-one-free mentality," said the graduate of Saint Mary's University and the International Academy of Design & Technology in Toronto.
Reviving the old
"I am reviving the old techniques of the way garments used to be made. It's old ways of tailoring, cutting, and creating pieces that are one of a kind. The style might be the same, but the found garment will be unique."
Her company exists to redefine the re-cut vintage T-shirt: The owner will take charge of the neglected and destitute (T-shirt), whose previous owners have been proven unable to suitably provide the necessary influences to develop and raise them to a higher place.
"It all comes down to the found garment," she said. "The T-shirt tells me what kind of style to cut. You look at the tee and you see what style would work best for it."
She likes the old, frayed look and prints that are fading away. She wants there to be a history and texture to the fabric.
This is especially important when it comes to reusing denim. She looks for super soft. For the upcoming season, she has turned jeans into a jacket. The waist band - the belt loops still attached - is now a mandarin collar.
"The fabric is soft, so when you wear it, it really forms to your body," Munson said. She shops at Frenchys, Value Village, The Salvation Army, and other places like that.
Another new-to-spring creation is Bermuda shorts made from jeans and with a zipper up the fronts of the legs.
A purple trench coat has been transformed into a dress; the side pockets are now located in the back.
People will often bring in their old clothing - an old T-shirt they might not be ready to part with - and she will pair it with a new shirt.
"You use a lot of the original pieces and bring them to the new garment. It has a history, but it is a new marriage," Munson said. "It's about not getting rid of what you have, using the waste."
Flavia Lytle refers to this as slow fashion - a movement similar garment rack to slow food, when people try to eat goods produced and grown locally instead of shipped from thousands of kilometres away.
"People are really into finding something that speaks to them, and I think that is where I am coming from," said the owner of A-OK Clothing-Art.
"It also speaks to them that I am doing garment rack something where I recycle stuff and there are no middle-people. I am not a chain."
Based in Lunenburg, Lytle also reuses clothing, fabrics and remnants to create garment rack new pieces of clothing.
"I have always been a crafty person," the 33-year-old said. "I love it. I would be a terrible employee for someone. I can't work a nine-to-five job, I tried and failed. I worked as a translator, and taught languages, but I said 'No, I can't do any more paper-related stuff. I want to use my hands.'"
Lytle has been renovating her own clothing since she became a self-taught sewer in the '90s.
'I want one'
"Most people would say, 'Where did you get that? I want one.' And I'd say, 'Well, I made it myself.' I always had good responses and it was just fun to do. I took a lot of care doing it. I tried to make my stuff not look like it was pieced together."
It was a couple of years ago that the mother of three garment rack - seven, eight and nine years old - decided to turn recycled fashion into a business.
She's turned adult-sized shirts into children's dresses, deconstructed T-shirts and then stitched different pieces together, and cut the monsters of a Where the Wild Things Are piece of fabric to make a series of shirts.
"Things are trendy, and trends are that - passing fancies. If you go to any boutique in any city or town, you will find everything is similar," she said "When I make something, it will be something no one else will have."
Since the business is new, most of her clients find her through word of mouth. It means she can concentrate garment rack on each piece of clothing and personalize it for the wearer.
She has a list of 10 questions she asks her clients, from the obvious, like their favourite colour, to the off-beat, like the last song they listened to.
"I haven't had anyone call me and say, 'You didn't nail garment rack. This is horrible, I am sending it back.' So, that's encouraging."
It's also priced right for a lot of people. Unlike similar clothing stores in Toronto or Vancouver, where the tag price might be $120 for a garment, everything at A-OK is $40 and under.
"As a mom, I don't like to buy stuff for my kids which they might wear for a year and all of a sudden chuck out," she said. "The majority of stuff people throw out on the curb come spring cleaning garment rack are clothes."
Munson, who sells her clothes in stores garment rack that carry small Canadian fashion lines, sells her T-shirts for $40, long-sleeved shirts for $50, and jean jackets for $150.
"A lot more people are acknowledging that these are the clothes they want to wear, and there are more stores carrying these lines," Munson said. "People want things that are different, and this is a way to get that."
