This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Axel Brouillette-Gillam is a co-owner of Cosmik Debriz, a vintage Alaskana shop that began from his interests in thrifting and fashion, with his wife Khrystl. Brouilette-Gillam grew up in Homer before moving to Juneau in 2015, and it’s life in Alaska that inspires what he sells.
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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Axel Brouillette-Gillam, and I am the owner of Cosmik Debriz.
We initially started the shop as kind of a pop-up situation. So, markets at the JAHC, the Mendenhall Mall had some Saturday markets — we would go to those and have a pop-up and kind of have our things. And then we kind of spontaneously found the space that we are now.
So yeah, to find us, we’re basically at the corner of North Franklin and Second Street, where High Tide Tattoo is. And then if you go up North Franklin Street a little bit, we’re the first door on that same blue building, and you’ll go up some nice stairs, and then we’re the first door that you see.
And when you come in, it’s basically three rooms that are connected to each other. And so we come to the room that has all of the clothes, we have racks that are just vintage clothing that has fun colors, fun patterns, fun styles. You know, I like these — we have some of these pieces that are from the early ‘90s when there’s this kind of Western thing going on. I enjoy those a lot. I think those are fun.
And then we keep coming into the space, my favorite part of the store, which is the vintage Alaska clothing. So we have , this is the jacket from an Eagle Quality Centers from when I was a little kid in Homer. It’s now a Safeway, but when I was a kid, it was an Eagle Quality Center. An old Super Bear jacket with the old Super Bear logo on it, you know. So yeah, jackets like that. Super fun. And then we have vintage Alaska sweatshirts, and then t-shirts as well.
So now we’re kind of in the, I call it the cashier room. It’s where the front counter is. We have our TV with our cassette deck.
And then yeah, we have these flags here. I got these online from a guy in Ohio. And what’s significant about them is they have the 49 stars from when Alaska joined the United States, and 1959 was the only year that there was a flag that had 49 stars because December of 1959, Hawaii became a state [Editor’s note: Hawaii became a state in August of 1959].
And then another thing that we also have that’s vintage Alaska-related is things like postcards, press photos — so yeah, things like that. We have a Patsy Ann postcard from the 1930s.
And when I’m picking out items, when I’m looking at items, I’m often thinking of, there’s probably people out there that would connect to this thing. But like, one good example is, I had a 1990s Anchorage Aces — so, there used to be the Alaska Aces, it’s the hockey team that we used to have up here, and before they were called the Alaska Aces, they were called the Anchorage Aces. And so it was a jersey from the 1990s that had Anchorage Aces on it. And then so, I had a cowbell as well that had, you know, the season ‘97, ‘96 on it. But I had that up and for sale and I had a guy come in, and his dad played on the Anchorage Aces. And so he was just so incredibly excited to see it. He was so excited to get it for his dad, and to have it.
And then moving into the last room. Currently, it is our halibut coat room. And then the exciting development is, the new exciting development is a chain stitch machine. And so what this is for doing is like custom embroidery, and it’s hand-operated, so there’s a crank underneath that I use to control the direction that the needle is going in.
And you know, right now we’re running it, you know, this is kind of a slow mode, you know, not going too crazy fast right now. I need to work on my Ts, but it almost says KTOO.
Going into the future, going to be doing basically vintage jackets, vintage clothing, and then doing direct to garment embroidery on those things related to Juneau’s history.
Yeah, just, I don’t know, these things, they make me really excited. I think they’re really cool. And it’s awesome to get to share them with others.