1101 West Fulton, (312)226-4565, shopfixchicago.com (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...

Goods: Casual, professional and semiformal clothing for women and men. Owners: After working in retail for years, sisters Maggie and Jennifer Gelber decided that it was time to be their own bosses and run their own store in their own town. Read the rest of this entry »

1933 N. Damen, (773)276-7645, shernettswaby.com (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...

Goods: Women’s apparel and handbags. Designer: Project Runway Canada contestant Shernett Swaby is the creative force behind the fabulous lace and pleated pieces found here. Read the rest of this entry »

200 E. Delaware, Unit C, (312)335-1353, urbanstyleemporium.com (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
 Loading ...

Goods: Formerly known as Only She, the store has expanded from women’s clothing and accessories to also include gifts and art. Designers: Lorain Croft, Elm Design and Ivan Grundahl. Read the rest of this entry »

1405 N. Wells, (312)587-9800 (5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
 Loading ...

Goods: Men’s and women’s couture clothing and shoes. Designers: Big names like Chloe, Marc Jacobs, Moschino and Richard Tyler are present, to name a few. Read the rest of this entry »

900 N. Michigan, 5th Floor, (312) 867-0900, yolandalorente.com (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...

Goods: Women’s apparel and accessories. Designers: All of the clothing is hand-painted and designed by the store’s namesake, with jewelry from local artist Elaine Fisher. Read the rest of this entry »

4140 N. Sheridan, (773)472-7220, blakestandard.com

Goods: Women’s contemporary sportswear. Designers: The label’s own line is backed by creative director and designer, Pierre Colorado. Owner: Having worked for huge lifestyle labels like Abercrombie & Fitch, Perry Ellis and Levi’s, Colorado brings his twelve plus years of design experience to Oakbrook with thus, his latest venture. Vibe: SoHo chic. The store is meant to embody the London loft Colorado sees the “Blake woman” inhabiting. Price Range: Moderate-Expensive. Shopper’s Perks: Although the Blake Standard line has been featured in boutiques like Perchance and Cinnamon, Oakbrook serves as their flagship – the very first to debut and exclusively feature the line in its entirety.

Terri Vizzone believes in retail therapy—you know, that calming, healing effect that being in a store with fabulous things has on a woman’s psyche when she’s just broken up with her boyfriend? Or lost a pet? Or even just woke up on the wrong side of the bed?

Taking the theory to heart, Vizzone has made over and relocated her store, Only She, into a shopper’s paradise—a safe haven, if you will, for all things fabulous. Newly named the Urban Style Emporium, Vizzone returns to her original block with a new look and a new vibe.

“We want it to be a place that people feel relaxed,” she says. “Sometimes people just need eye candy…sometimes, you need to just take a break in your day, and we want you to feel like, yes, you can do that, and we’re not going to be breathing down your neck, ‘are you gonna buy something, are you gonna buy something?’”

Having relocated once before, Vizzone decided the third time was a charm. “I figured, if I’m gonna’ move the store again, I want to come right out of the box doing something different. The whole world is changing, everything is shifting, so you need to shake it up a bit!” she says. Read the rest of this entry »

When Emilia Dlugolecka was laid off from her corporate job in January, she never imagined she’d become an entrepreneur.

“At first it was like, this is great, I’m gonna hibernate this winter and I don’t have to fight traffic or get on the El when it’s like zero degrees,” she recalls. A few months later, she went into panic mode. “I kind of woke up from hibernation in late March and said, ‘ohmigod, I don’t have a job,’” she says. “I literally got in my car one day and started looking for storefronts… I called every place on Clark in Andersonville that had a ‘for rent’ sign on it.”

Just two months later, Dlugolecka was “standing in line downtown, getting [her] business license. I’m going, ‘what the hell am I doing here?’” she says. Read the rest of this entry »

By Nicole Briese

Wake up, Wells Street—Trevian has arrived. With just three little words, Chicago’s resident fashionista has made her presence known, and Old Town just may never recover: Hot. Ass. Sale.

Painted in the window of Wells Street’s newest boutique, the unapologetic advertisement is definitely turning heads. “We wanted to see how [the neighborhood] would respond to our least aggressive window display,” owner Trevian Kutti says. Opening her namesake in March, Kutti has decided the time has come to introduce Old Town residents to luxury retail—Trevian style. “[We’ve been] taking our time… gauging the [area,]” she says. “As you can see, the sign in the window is like the warmup. It’s like touching water to see if it’s too hot. Right now it’s lukewarm.”

But not for long. Not if Kutti has anything to do with it. Known for her Oak Street staple G’Bani, Kutti is no novice to the world of retail—or the controversial “statement window.” “We do windows that show we are human beings before we are a business,” Kutti said in a New York Times piece that featured her button-pushing displays in January 2006.

Currently in the process of relocating G’Bani to Old Town, Kutti and husband B.J. have already begun implementing their plans to dominate the block with their latest venture. “We wanted to make Trevian completely upscale, so now we do Moschino, Richard Tyler [and] Chloe…to bring a destination luxury boutique to Wells Street,” she says. Read the rest of this entry »

After working in retail for years, sisters Maggie and Jennifer Gelber decided that it was time to be their own bosses and run their own store in their own town in the heart of the meatpacking district at Fulton Market. Raised in the suburbs of Chicago and inspired by their fashionista mother and the fashionable people they saw walking down the street, the Gelber sisters have always loved clothes and admired the people they knew who wore them well. But their concern was that fashion often wasn’t made for real people, and didn’t work with an ordinary lifestyle, which is why they established Fix boutique with “Chicago on the brain,” Jennifer says.

Jennifer noted that many of the styles she and her sister saw at fashion shows would not work for her family and friends.  Because of crazy Chicago weather and a distinctive Midwestern fashion sense, Jennifer argues that Chicagoans need a fashion boutique for Chicagoans, and that is why she and Maggie handpicked each clothing item with a particular person or a particular situation in mind, customizing the clothes for lifestyles and people rather than trends. Read the rest of this entry »