We talked to Bebe Mehr, owner of Collage Boutique on East University Boulevard and North Park Avenue after it opened yesterday.

Wildcat: OK, you’re on the spot. What’s your favorite period of history for fashion? You can say the future.

Mehr: OK. Well, I like the ’50s and the ’70s.

W: I really like the Great Depression era.

M: Yeah.

W: I think they used cheaper materials too, because they were starving and everything. So since fashion is kind of art in itself, if you could wear a painting what would it be?

M: Like a famous painting?

W: Yeah.

M: My mom’s actually an artist, so I’d probably wear something my mom made. My mom actually did that painting there. (Points to a humongous canvas of a woman lining the back of the store.)

W: What does that mural symbolize?

M: It’s a woman, that’s all.

W: Would you wear it as a skirt or a bra or underwear?

M: Probably a dress.

W: Out of anything in the store, what would you wear to vote?

M: I don’t know that I’d wear anything in particular to vote, but whatever I was wearing that day probably.

W: Do you wear all your clothes from here?

M: Everything I wear is from here. Every day there’s at least one thing I’m wearing from here.

W: Do you have clothes that fit different moods?

M: You know if you’re in a more dressy mood, sometimes you wear more toned-down colors. I like bright colors.

W: Do you have any business clothes? Say you’re on business in Bangalore, India, going to visit a call center…

M: We have mostly nighttime clothes, but some of it can be daytime. If you pair it with a black jacket, the more conservative dresses. For the most part, it’s kind of a night thing.

W: So say you were in Mexico on the beach chatting up the locals, pre-evening wear, something like that?

M: Yeah, stuff like that. Things that you could wear when you were on vacation, throw on over a bathing suit or going to L.A. or to New York and going to a party…

W: What if you were doing community service work, visiting Sudanese refugees in the ghettos of Alabama? Do you have anything for that?

M: No, we have nighttime clothes.

W: Oh, that’s not professional. What purse would you use to gather food if you were in the apocolypse, and you had to fit all of the food in the purse?

M: I don’t have any more answers for these questions.

-Andi Berlin