Cul De Sac Enr

Mélissa Turgeon is the owner, along with her husband Marc Jetté, of Cul-de-Sac, a thrift-store-style clothing shop located on Saint Laurent Boulevard. It was through her mother, who was also a seamstress, that Melissa developed her passion for sewing and fashion. She began making her own clothes at a young age so it was natural for her to study at the Marie-Victorin CEGEP School of Fashion, where she graduated in 1998 with a degree in fashion design firmly in hand. For the next five years, she worked in the fashion industry before moving on to a recycling company, where she worked with fur.

"I rented a room where I could do my sewing and it eventually turned into a shop," recalls Melissa. In 2007, she opened her first  Cul-de-Sac on Saint-Catherine Street, before opening a second location. Her early experiences taught her the ropes of entrepreneurship and in 2014 she combined the best of her two shops into one larger store on Saint Laurent Boulevard. "At the start, I was making my creations using recycled and vintage clothing," she says. Although Melissa still makes a few items of clothing, Cul-de-Sac has turned into a genuine thrift store.