He’s redefining luxury retail resale in Edmonton with a modern bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce model
Age: 32
Joel Nardelli has always loved the self-expression of fashion.
“When I was six, I dyed my hair blue. In Grade 10, I was wearing Italian suits to school,” he says. Nardelli studied clothing and textiles at the University of Alberta, where he combined his fashion studies with business classes.
As managing partner and director of Blogger Armoire, a designer resale shop, Nardelli sees Edmonton’s fashionable side every day — in clients’ closets and in the company’s store off 124 Street. (There’s a second location in Windermere.) He brought his distinctive taste, curating inventory and styling clients as he built his business from scratch.
“I learned how to contact the city to get construction permits, and how to get architectural drawings,” he says. “I learned how to lay baseboard!”
He inherited his sense of style from his Italian grandmother, who’d put on an outfit just to go to the ATM, he says. Her honesty and sense of self propelled his dreams of working in fashion and having his own store.
He has changed how shoppers think about consignment — as a premium experience that’s better for the environment and their wallets. Fourteen years ago, few people were thinking about luxury resale, let alone in Edmonton. But Nardelli, who had been sourcing vintage designer pieces from eBay on a student budget, knew there was potential.
“I have pieces in the store that a museum would want in its collection,” he says, adding that beautiful designer pieces lurk in closets and storage units around the city.
Nardelli has started hosting charity shopping parties to benefit organizations like Ballet Edmonton and the YWCA, bringing the fashion community together for wine tastings, live jazz and clothing sales events.
“It’s become a third space where people interested in design, fashion and arts can mingle,” Nardelli adds. “I’ve always believed in bricks and mortar in Edmonton.”
This article appears in the November-December 2026 issue of Edify
