On the corner of Notre Dame W. St. and St-Martin St. is a quaint vintage shop with window mannequins so stylish and chic, you can’t help but be lured in. The high ceiling and bright natural light flatter the colour-coordinated racks of garments hanging from beams. Owner Elaine Léveillé says the system goes beyond colour, it’s about texture, patterns and rhythm.

“I copied it from my closet,” said Léveillé. “Always by colour, so that when I look for something, it’s there. If I want to do different combinations because trends have changed, then I know where to look and what to put together.”

Léveillé is the sassy and fashionable owner of ERA Vintage Wear, a shop that is as inviting and vibrant as its proprietor. In the midst of the garment racks are pristine white couches and an end table with fashion magazines; a lounge area Léveillé insists on having.

“I meet different kinds of women all the time,” says Léveillé of her clientele of trendy bloggers and quirky older ladies. “That why we have the couches here. There’s a lot of chatting.”

Her welcoming atmosphere and high fashion reputation have travelled beyond Montreal and created intrigue among stylish celebrities such as Michelle Williams, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore and Jean-Paul Gauthier. As flattered as she is, Léveillé has a very modest attitude towards her high-profile clients. Rather than cater solely to the rich and famous and stock her store with labels, Léveillé is concerned with quality and appreciates customers who just “get it.”

“If I wanted my shop to be all about labels, it would be very easy for me to do,” she said. “But I would be so bored you’d find me asleep in the corner of my changing room.”

Aside from her motherly duties, Léveillé’s business and fashion schedule keeps her too busy to even think of napping in her store. She dry-cleans, disinfects, alters and repairs every piece of garment and accessory she hand-picks from parties-passed. Though the store may be filled with vintage-wear of every decade from the ‘20s to the mid-‘80s (Léveillé hates the cheap fabrication since), she remodels pieces to compliment current trends.

“I’ll take something and make it completely different,” said Léveillé. “When I look at a piece and I know it has potential, I can undo it because it’s sewn well. Sometimes I make something crappy look good, but it’s a question of quality.”

Léveillé has had a keen eye for vintage wear since the age of eight. As a child, Léveillé would join her mother antique furniture shopping. While she waited for her mother to pick out the pieces with restoration potential, Léveillé would venture about and come back with puffy dresses and lace gloves. She quickly learned that if she simply asked for these clothes no one else wanted, they would be hers to keep.

“By the time I was 14, my room was literally a closet,” she said. “I had racks and dressers full of clothes.”

Though Léveillé was not always a shop owner, she always surrounded herself with art and fashion. With a master’s degree from Concordia in painting and drawing, Léveillé spent many years in public relations for Montreal designers like Eve Gravel, Denis Gagnon and Tavan & Mitto.

She soon grew tired of chasing after her money and “hustling and bustling” for others. In November 2004, over a glass of cognac with a friend, Léveillé had an epiphany that led her to ERA.

“I remember saying that it would just be so much easier if I had a vintage shop where I would do things and move on, and if people needed me, they knew where to find me,” said Léveillé. “As soon as I voiced it, I knew exactly what I was about to do.”

Since then, Léveillé spent seven years building and beautifying her shop. Her very own installation where she can dress to her mood, be creative, play dress-up, and share her love for fashion and vintage wisdom.

“For me, getting dressed is not about trend, it’s about style,” said Léveillé. “It’s timeless. You could have style and just readapt it, retune it.

A gourmet vegetarian cooking class followed by a five-course feast for only $27 but worth $55, or so the website claimed. My mother could not resist the 51 per cent savings advertised on the group coupon website, so she bought two of them, one for me and one for her. She claimed it would be “a bonding experience.”

The deal was offered on a now-defunct website which used to offer daily deals in the Montreal and Toronto areas before it merged with its parent company, Beyond the Rack. It was just one of the dozens and dozens of group-buying websites that have popped up online in the last few years. Groupon and Living Social are among the most popular with over 60 million subscribers worldwide between the two of them.

The way Groupon works is that the site offers its members daily deals in their city. A minimum number of packages must to be sold before midnight in order for the deal to be valid. Promoting what they call “collective buying power,” the site offers savings on everything from restaurants to spa packages. LivingSocial works similarly, offering deals on vacations, adventures and activities. The only difference is that they do not have the same minimum buying requirements. Both offer additional savings if the deal is referred to a friend who then purchases it.

The concept has definitely caught on and together the companies boast savings of over $1 billion. While I have heard many good things from friends who have made use of the site, my own personal experience was not the best.

The voucher instructed the purchaser to call and make a reservation prior to the class, which my mother did. The theme was Indian cuisine and we arrived at 6:20 p.m. – 10 minutes ahead of the schedule class time – to a room full of women and several other mother-daughter combos. The people we assumed to be other cooking-class participants sat on one side of the store sipping tea, while a cluster of women stood in the kitchen side of the store chatting. Twelve seats surrounded the kitchen’s large wooden counter though the area looked better suited for a group of 4. Ingredients were stacked on the side, next to a woman who I assumed to be the chef.

Finally at 6:45 p.m., we were invited into the kitchen to grab a seat. The chef singled me out and invited me to sit in the stool directly next to her, saying I looked like “trouble.” Uninterested in being her pet, I took the stool next to my mother. Then there was a scramble to find extra seats, because there were not enough. The class turned out to be more of a lecture than a cooking class. The chef spoke about the energy of food, the importance of fresh produce and did the cooking while we listened. Not once in the entire class did a participant get to make any part of the meal. We received four, not five courses, all of which used the same curry paste.

While I felt a little misled by the description on the coupon, most people I know who have used these sites only have good things to say. And while it is easy to question why a company would offer their products, meals or services for half off, John Molson School of Business senior marketing lecturer and academic director Harold J. Simpkins explains that for small companies who have a limited budget, group-buying sites are a really effective form of advertising. It also allows them to limit how many discounts are sold and under what conditions.

The sites are generally very specific with which companies and businesses they promote, says Simpkins, because bad experiences tend to circulate quickly and could easily ruin the site’s reputation. Even if the group-buying company has good intentions, it is still up to the buyer to make sure that what they are purchasing is exactly what they want, otherwise they may suffer from buyer’s remorse.

Quick tips

Here are some tips on how to avoid being disappointed by online deals:

1. Don’t get seduced. Simpkins warns buyers not to get swept up in the deep discount. “People tend to see this large discount percentage and sometimes act without thinking the purchase through.”

2. Do your research. “As would be the case with anything that you would buy, do your research,” emphasizes Simpkins. “Just because it is being offered through one of these coupon sites does not mean the product is going to be satisfactory to you.” This involves checking out both the site you are purchasing off of and the company offering the deal.

3. Follow up on the purchase. Lea Prevel Katsanis, the chair and associate professor of the marketing department at Concordia University, warns shoppers that most of the businesses who utilize these services are small. Therefore, they might not be prepared to handle the numbers of people who sign up for their offers and might not have the capacity to handle all the requests for service that occur because of the deal. It can be helpful to call the location beforehand and find out when is the best time to redeem your purchase.

4. Make sure it is really a deal. It is a good idea to check out the website of the company offering the service as sometimes you actually get a better deal without going through LivingSocial or Groupon but by going directly to the company itself, writes Prevel Katsanis.

5. Read the fine print. It is important to read the specifications of the deal because many come with expiration dates and some might have specifications when it comes to redeeming the purchase. Be sure to check the language the course is offered in, whether there is a restriction to new customers only, if it is valid for eat-in and/or takeout, whether tax is included, what happens to unredeemed cash, if it can be combined with other offers, etc.