Juan & Juanita

Juan & Juanita was one of Montreal’s most successful retailers for youth-driven club and street fashion during the 1990s. The business was founded by Juan Enrique Hinojosa, who had worked for Nicola Pelly and Harry Parnass’ Parachute brand during the late 1980s. He was manager of Parachute’s four Montreal stores, helped open boutiques in Calgary and the West Edmonton Mall, and was part of the brand’s New York buying team.

By the turn of the 1990s, Parachute’s core clientele was ageing and, thanks to his moonlighting gig as a flight attendant on weekends, Hinojosa saw firsthand the new nightclub culture and street fashion trends emerging in European and American cities. Identifying a gap in the Montreal retail scene and the potential for a new urban youth market, Hinojosa left Parachute to open his first Juan & Juanita boutique in a 600-square-foot space in Les Cours Mont Royal in 1991.

Juan & Juanita was a lifestyle boutique, catering to Montreal’s nightclub aficionados and the era’s thriving rave, skateboarding and hip-hop subcultures.

A near-instant success, it quickly drew in a broader fashion-forward clientele and became known as a hotspot for designer denim. Juan & Juanita helped put the struggling Les Cours shopping mall on the map as a destination for fashion during the decade, with trendy shops like Aritmetik, Mosquito, and Space fb following Hinojosa’s lead.

Faced with the intense popularity of the boutique, Hinojosa expanded Juan & Juanita to a massive 20,000-square-foot site in the shopping mall, in addition to opening stores on St. Lawrence Boulevard, St. Denis Street, in Laval, and in Toronto. The Les Cours locale, however, remained the flagship and most successful boutique.

The store sold an eclectic mix of international and local fashion and accessory brands including Diesel, Gaultier Jeans, FreshJive, Stüssy, Lithium, Diabless, François Beauregard and Rugby North America (now m0851). Juan & Juanita was also an early wholesale client of American Apparel before founder Dov Charney opened his brand’s iconic store spaces. Hinojosa would screen print American Apparel T-shirts, selling several thousand dollars’ worth every couple of days during the early 1990s.

Additionally, Juan & Juanita designed and manufactured an affordable in-house brand, Juanito, which included both apparel and a full makeup line.

Rave promoters often sold tickets to their events at the store as Hinojosa had developed good relationships with Montreal’s premier clubs like Sona, Stereo, Playground and KOX. In 1994, DJ Tiga Sontag, an important figure in the development of Montreal’s rave and electronic music scene of the era, opened the first DNA Records in Juan & Juanita. Hinojosa recalled how the store would be flooded with DJs on Fridays when Sontag received new shipments. Eventually, DNA Records relocated to the Juan & Juanita boutique on St. Lawrence Boulevard.

In about 1999, Hinojosa opened a furniture department on the second floor of Les Cours Mont Royal and, unfortunately, it was a gamble that did not pay off. Juan & Juanita ceased operations in 2001, briefly re-opening as a smaller store in Les Cours from 2002 to 2004. Hinojosa, a passionate vegan and animal rights activist, now runs a successful recruiting firm in Montreal.