Pure Couture

Stepping into Pure Couture feels like walking into a time capsule. Oldies are softly playing on the radio. Fur coats from the 1920s are lined up against the back wall. A white dress from the ‘60s is hanging in the front window. Each consignment item has a story; if only these pieces could talk.

Denise Jonasz, owner of Pure Couture, a high-end women’s consignment shop in Haddonfield, NJ, knows many of the stories behind the items she sells, but out of respect for her clients, she never shares too many details. Some of the items are brought to her new with tags, others have been lovingly cared for over decades. But all are high quality.

Denise says that her love for fashion started at a young age. She attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia for college and graduated with a degree in fashion merchandising. She loved studying couture out of magazines for school. After college, she held a buyer position in a Canadian clothing company until they decided to close, and then she went into sales. She always found herself wandering into consignment shops, and she had a knack for looking at an item and easily telling if it was well made.

Denise was a frequent visitor of a previous Haddonfield-based consignment shop called Nifty Thrifties. “I would come to Nifty Thrifities, and Carol Berger, the owner, eventually said to me, ‘Why don’t you just do this?’ It was 2007. I drove down the street, and there was a ‘For Rent’ sign in front of this building.” She met the landlord, and he was skeptical. “Mechanic Street back then was not what it is today. He asked me, ‘Do you think you can get the people here?’. I said, ‘I’m not worried about getting people in here. I got this.’” The rest is history. Denise credits her ex-husband Lou with thinking of the name Pure Couture. She also says Lou’s father played a crucial role in loaning her money for a month when she decided to purchase the space in 2010. “He believed in my new business, and I want to honor him for that. He loved seeing me thrive.”

As we chat, clients walk in and out of the store. One woman is headed to a gala in England with her mom and wants to buy vintage gloves and a cameo. Another is a graduate student looking for an evening gown for her law school prom. We take breaks from the interview to “ooh” and “ahh” over everything she tries on. On the day of the photo session, Skylar Volz, a Philly-based model, was on her way out the door after shopping. Denise playfully convinced her to stay and have her photo taken. They quickly walked around and put together an outfit.

It is clear that Denise is an expert at putting people at ease. She says that she loves helping people find their style and select pieces they will feel beautiful in, but she is also happy when clients want to browse on their own. “If someone asks me for help, I love to help. But if not, I’ll just let you shop. I want people to feel like they are shopping in my closet. It’s fun. It’s my passion.” She carries clothing for all body types, from size 0 to size 20.

Denise’s clients find her in various ways. “Through word of mouth, through referral, or just by walking by. I also do estate clean outs and closet organizing.”

Denise recalls the first time she was contacted to do an estate clean out. A man reached out to her about the estate of a well-known family member who was a hoarder. She had passed away, and he was overwhelmed with the amount of items that needed sorting. Denise recalls that a dumpster was outside of the home, and people were dumpster diving, because they knew about this woman’s wealth. 

“It was a lot. I went through the front room, and there were brand new bags and boxes; I picked out what I could sell. There were 13 items. I walked out to leave. The man stopped me. I said, ‘I have a 750 foot store, I can’t possibly take all of this.’ And he begged, ‘You can’t leave me. I need to hire you. Please clean this whole thing up.’ I took the 13 items, I sold all of them for him, and I ended up working out of that house for 3 weeks. I still had to be at my store during the day, because I had just started, but I went to the estate every morning before I opened and then afterwards. That was the beginning of my estate sales.”

Denise has had meaningful experiences doing estate clean outs. “I’ve had the most beautiful people reach out to me after they lost someone. I will go through their whole closet, their collection of 40 years. I get to hear every story; I become their confidant. I am still friends with many of them to this day.” After one particularly powerful experience with a noted gentleman who had lost his wife, there was an article written about her in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Denise describes her own style as a mix of new couture and vintage; she will usually be wearing a bit of both. She says that she frequently purchases items in her store because she just can’t resist. “This is the way to shop. It’s fun. I have thrown a lot of myself into this.” She feels great pride in the space that she has built up over these past 19 years. “When you bring older things into your home, you bring an energy with them. People tell me they feel good energy in here.”