Uwishunu.com

If Marie Antoinette became a punk and turned Versailles into a denim boutique, it would probably look something like Maison du Very Bad Horse. With the paint-splattered Louis XVI settee and a baroque elk-skull chandelier, Maison du Very Bad Horse’s relatively new location in the Piazza at Schmidt’s in Northern Liberties is the brainchild of local designer, Kim Montenegro. Kim describes herself as someone who lives her life in a pair of jeans and says her work came out of living a blue collar lifestyle, and initially made clothes to wear to the factory where she made more clothes.

Formerly known as Very Bad Horse while at the store’s first location on N. 3rd Street in Northern Liberties, Montenegro says the name comes from a Buddhist parable describing people as four different types of horses. The store’s namesake is the most stubborn of the horses, the fourth “very bad horse.”

While Montenegro definitely merges Buddhist philosophy and a fantasy-like French chateau aesthetic, and despite the fact that her clothes have been sold as far away as Japan, she maintains that all of Maison’s clothes are made in Philadelphia and that she only hires local printers, giving some hometown street-cred to one of Philadelphia’s most unique boutiques.

Maison Du Very Bad Horse
1050 North Hancock Street #80, Philadelphia, PA 19123
www.verybadhorse.com