With an exuberant personality that belied her diminutive size, Suelynn Gustafson, the colorfully coifed co-owner of Flossy McGrew’s, was a fixture at the South Broadway shop that became a magnet for goths, drag queens and other iconoclasts. She died Tuesday at age 71.
It’s impossible for passers-by to miss Flossy McGrew’s storefront, with its gaudily grim silver-spray-painted facade.
Friends still wonder how Gustafson evaded zoning-code enforcement to create the bulging collage of skulls, gargoyles and shrines that at once evoke Mardi Gras, Day of the Dead and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Shoppers crossing the ornate threshold find themselves eye-to-eye with a coffin and hearse memorabilia display on the right, and cranky skeletons on the left.
The crowded sales counter is a few feet away. Sometimes Gustafson danced on it. The cavernous sales floor stretches beyond, cheek-to-jowl clothing racks separated by just enough space for customers to sidle through.
The racks are jammed with Hawaiian shirts, leisure suits, choir robes, schoolgirl uniforms, poodle skirts, athletic jackets, dramatic frocks trimmed with sequins and boas, and mid-20th-century outfits that would be at home on “Mad Men.” Bowling and athletic trophies, costume jewelry and unlikely shoes covered every available surface.
Flossy McGrew’s, which Gustafson founded in the 1980s, is famous for her extensive collection of glittering, bedazzled Christmas sweaters. She was among the first retailers to intuit the cachet those sweaters carried among customers who loved ironic clothing.
“I like ugly clothing,” she told Deborah Hiestand, one of the pickers who scoured estate sales and thrift stores to find eclectic merchandise for Flossy McGrew’s inventory. Hiestand also made two movies about Gustafson, “Grandma Goth” and “Flowers for a Funeral.”
Until her health deteriorated, the tiny and effervescent Gustafson was often in the store. Sometimes her shoulder-length magenta hair was loose, reminiscent of Grandmama Frump‘s style on “The Addams Family.” Other times, she disciplined it into a bun or ponytail.
She wore round, schoolmarm glasses that tended to slip down her narrow nose. She had a broad grin that featured a few teeth as patently unnatural as her hair color. Her earrings — little skeletons, skulls, caskets — reflected her interest in the macabre.
Gustafson was fascinated by death long before the members of the goth culture were conceived. She was 10 when her mother, an antiques and hardware dealer who ran Grandpa Snazzy’s next door to Flossy McGrew’s, gave her the funeral card of a boy her age. She found it sad but beautiful.
It was the beginning of a lifelong collection that included funeral cards, post-mortem photographs, death notices, Victorian mourning jewelry, a Victorian tear-catcher and a retired vintage hearse.
She lived alone with her labradoodle, Newman, and standard poodle, DJ. Survivors include a son, a brother and a sister. A memorial service is pending.
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com or twitter.com/byclairemartin
