Puces POP: Local artisans provide retail therapy for the commercial blues

From art-minded business seminars to record & gear swaps, film screenings and the music festival that started it all, Pop Montreal seems to have just about every aspect of Montreal’s massive creative scene locked down. As the largest do-it-yourself festival and marketplace in town and one of Pop Montreal’s best-established offshoots (at almost seven years old), this must-see event takes place three times a year and showcases local craft goods of all sorts imaginable.
 

As a marketplace for local and international artists, crafters, fashion designers, graphic artists and illustrators to sell their eclectic goods (and gain well-deserved exposure), this short but sweet shopping smorgasbord welcomes residents to reap the benefits of Montreal’s enormous creative scene. At this year’s March installment of the fair, the largest yet, over 100 vendors will be independently running booths and selling their own goods and one-of-a-kind items in seemingly every form conceivable. Unlikely articles like moustache bowties and necklaces made of antique luggage tags, from the likes of local fashion and design outlaws Self Made, will go on sale right beside the humble and homely cartoon-inspired ceramic ware of Atelier Make. This is all brought together in the name of independent artisanal expression and commerce, which makes this type of fair so worthy of support.

With free entry and something to please everyone, from the chic interior decorator (C Comme Ca) to the hip graphic designer (Deadweight, French Fourch) and even those in need of organic baby wear (Ginko), this DIY craft, design and fashion fair represents the kind of welcome resistance to commercialization and mass production that seems to only be gaining strength in Montreal.

 

Puces POP
March 5 & 6  | 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Free entry  | L’Eglise St-Enfant Jesus | 5039, St-Dominique (at St-Joseph)
popmontreal.com/puces