The Monocle Shop

First, if you consider Walmart to have high quality goods, this isn’t the shop for you.
The Monocle Shop, the latest retail outpost/​brand extension from Canada’s Tyler Brule, is a tiny, highly edited store containing a lot of stuff you probably don’t need at prices you probably can’t afford.
That said, if you love to shop and you’re looking for brands that normally can’t be found in Canada, then you should stop by.
Sick of Moleskine? By some Monocle stationery. Sick of socks made in Cambodia? By some socks made in Japan. Sick of listening to Internet radio for free? Buy a $ 530 Internet radio that has a special button to take you directly to Monocle 24.
I like the Monocle brand. I like the shop. It’s not for everyone and it certainly is open to being made fun of.

«Excuse me, what type of wood is this magazine rack made of?»
The first thing I heard as I walked into the 400 square feet of pathetic fuckwittery that is The Monocle Shop. To be entirely honest, the quote kind of sums the whole place up.
The customer who asked the question looked entirely serious as he perused and pondered the comically overpriced small wooden box.
Your jaw just drops to the floor at the intensity of the idiocy. It feels like you’re walking into a Kids in the Hall sketch.
Everything about this place is wrong.
Think of it as the antithesis of a Walmart. Instead of a wide selection of low-​priced, high quality goods… you get a handful of pixie dust and magic beans skewed over a minuscule retail environment. The friendly greeter has been replaced with a spandex-​wearing charlatan dickhead and there’s nothing to look at or buy.
I’m all for expensive goods and high-​end fixtures… but there’s nothing here that even remotely looks or feels any different than stuff you can get better versions of at the dollar store.
The perfect balance of clueless and pretentious.
Monocle magazine has been striving to reach the ‘young-​affluent-​jetset’ for quite some time. With brand outreaches like this, it’s going to quickly become known as «The Economist for people who can’t read».
Vapid and vacant.
Like bashing your head against a very expensive faux brick wall.