Growing up, Chris Lavoie was never much into fashion. His interest in more stylish clothing came along later in life, and has neatly coincided with his tenure as store manager for the Missoula location of REVOLVR Menswear.
“I was a typical Montana boy,” Chris explains, “wore blue jeans, T-shirts. Met my wife and she slowly introduced me to more well-fitting clothes, stuff that I kind of always liked, but I came from a very ‘country’ family and so never really experimented with that. Then I kind of found my own fashion in what REVOLVR carries.”
While out of town for a wedding, Chris happened to stop in to REVOLVR’s Bozeman location and had a serendipitous interaction with their then-district manager, which led to an interview, which led eventually to his current position.
Chris has a background in sales, and he was at that time in a stage of discovering his next move. “I had never envisioned myself in retail,” he says, “but the people, the energy, the story, was all great.”
“John [who founded REVOLVR in 2013 along with his wife Christine] had this idea of wanting to start a menswear shop, because there really wasn’t any around,” he continues, “and a place where anybody could come in and find quality clothes no matter what your walk of life is. It really just spoke to me in my own journey through clothes at the time.”
REVOLVR’s Missoula store stands out for a few reasons. For one, it sits right at Broadway and Higgins, essentially in the heart of downtown. They deal in boutique brands like Freenote Cloth, Naked & Famous, Taylor Stitch, and others, more “big city” in style than is often associated with Montana but a welcome addition to the styles available elsewhere in town. And, it’s a store geared toward providing men with fashionable choices apart from the norm.
“[REVOLVR] allows people to experience fashion directly for men, and you have more than just one tiny section in the back,” Chris says. “And it’s not only for men; we have plenty of women who shop here.”
“I think it provides a shop that’s very different for clothing,” he continues. “There are some overlaps with some other stores, but for the most part we have some unique stuff, more ‘craft’ clothing, if you will, different than anything I’ve seen in Missoula.”
In addition to the above-mentioned attributes that set REVOLVR apart from other clothing stores in the area, the shop is managed by Chris, a former salesperson, and he brings some of the energy and love of people that he cultivated in his former career to his work at REVOLVR. Only this time around the stakes feel much lower to him, more amenable to organic interpersonal connections without the same kind of intense pressure to perform.
He says his favorite part of managing REVOLVR “comes from my sales background, which is just getting to interact with people. You have people that are visiting from other countries, local Missoulians or people that are shopping here every week; you get to interact and talk to those people about their different walks of life.”
“That was my favorite part of sales and now I get to do that in a less high-pressure situation,” he says. “There’s not a quota that’s being driven. I get to fully interact with people and help them find something that makes them feel better about themselves.”