Vintage is all the rage and for men, you’ll find nowhere better than Jojo’s General Store on Ecclesall Road. 

Ecclesall Road is a high street home to many unique and independent stores, bars, restaurants and salons, and Jojo’s General Store, also known as Rag Parade Sheffield, is no exception. The small but mighty gem holds an incredible section of vintage menswear, supplying authentic military, workwear, sportswear and contemporary classics to the people of Sheffield and beyond. 

Jojo Elgarice, runner of the store, has always been passionate about menswear, saying: “I was always interested in clothes and fabrics, a bit of an obsessive over the way things used to be made.” 

This interest quickly grew into a livelihood, beginning his journey by opening a little shop in the Forum, renting a space for three years on Devonshire Street, buying and selling vintage clothing he loved. 

Packed from the floor to the ceiling full of eclectic and traditional menswear alike, spanning across a century of fashion trends, Jojo’s is certainly a perfect spot for vintage-lovers. 

“It’s all vintage menswear, specifically stuff that I really like. It’s old stuff from the early 1900s up to 1990s and more modern stuff,” he elaborates. 

The Ecclesall Road store will be celebrating its ninth anniversary in April this year, opening in 2016. Jojo felt he wanted a change of scenery moving to the high street. 

“It was a bit of a risk because I’d obviously already built up a business in town and then moved to completely the other side,” he says, but once he saw the shop front, he felt inspired to make the move happen. 

Stepping inside feels like walking into a time-travelling wardrobe, with hundreds of vintage pieces each holding a unique and interesting backstory. 

“I wanted it to be an old-fashioned sort of outfitters, very traditional, like how shops used to feel back in the day,” Jojo explains. 

Jojo enjoys menswear from an abundance of historical inspirations and says his personal style is characterised by a fusion between new and old.

“My style is just a mash-up really. I’m kind of greedy, I like bits from every era. I wear old stuff but I don’t wear head-to-toe old stuff. You get people who wear like head-to-toe 1950s outfits, I don’t really dress like that, I wear like a mix of old and new. So, I do buy new stuff, it’s just got to be something interesting usually.” 

The most popular items at the moment, however, seem to be the more modern pieces. Jojo adds: “At the minute, it’s probably the later stuff, from the 1980s/90s, like vintage Stone Island, that’s really popular. The older stuff, I like it, I’m passionate about it, but I would say it’s definitely more of a difficult sell.” 

Not only does the store house a wonderfully wide variety of vintage men’s clothing, it also offers a buying service, so anyone and everyone can pass on their potential hidden treasures to Rag Parade. “If anyone’s got any random stuff in their attic, something their grandad had in World War Two or something, I’d love to take it!” he says. 

The store receives a wide variety of customers, with no key demographic. According to Jojo: “There’s a big mix of kids aged from around 16, all the way up to old men. We get the odd girl, but not many because it’s all menswear. I have tried womenswear but I just don’t understand it, I think you’ve got to be passionate about it haven’t you? And I just found menswear was much more my thing.” 

The owner enjoys the wide variety of vintage selection Sheffield has to offer. 

“There’s quite a lot of places, they all serve a purpose and all have their own unique selling point, mine’s probably a bit more niche, a bit more specialist, but there’s also lots of good classic shops that just sell things like Levi’s. There’s quite a lot of options compared to some cities, I think it’s great. 

“There was a vintage shop on the street and people would ask me if I was really annoyed by it, but I’ve always thought the more the better. It’s like when you go on holiday you go to an area with all the restaurants, it doesn’t matter if there’s more than one of you. I think a bit of competition is healthy,” he explains. 

Catering to local and international interest alike, Jojo’s General Store also has many overseas clients. “I do have a lot of overseas customers, lots in Japan, so I don’t keep absolutely everything in the store, some of the really wacky stuff that those customers like to resell is kept in a storage warehouse, because it’s probably not going to sell to the everyday person.” 

Hopeful for more growth in the future, Jojo says: “Hopefully the area becomes busier and all the shops are filled and it just becomes more vibrant – the more the merrier.”