You might call this news a feast for the eyes: designer eyewear boutique Oliver Peoples opens its newest boutique, in Chicago’s Gold Coast, on July 9.

“Chicago has always been a target city for us to open an Oliver Peoples Boutique,” says David Schulte, CEO. “The city’s rich design, art and architectural heritage, in addition to the sophisticated people who live there, are a perfect match with our brand.” The new store even features a limited-edition frame sold exclusively at the Chicago location—a unisex style with eighteen-carat gold lenses and custom stamping and packaging.

The new Chicago location has similar design to Oliver Peoples boutiques across the nation, but with a couple of hints at Chicago’s culture. Its ash wood and concrete floors give a nod to the brand’s aesthetic: simplistic, sartorial and sexy. The store’s general manager, Chad Lissak, says the store “creates a unique retail experience that is more reminiscent of a contemporary gallery than a typical frame shop.” Lissak has been a part of everything involving the new store, from finding the location to putting the last frame on the shelf.

The boutique experience (as opposed to buying Oliver Peoples at a distributor location) offers the customer a more tailored experience. “Our eyewear stylists are extremely knowledgeable and can offer custom fittings to help you select the perfect frame taking into consideration all of the elements. We have on-site opticians for any and all prescription needs,” Lissak says. (Sarah Alo)

Oliver Peoples, 941 North Rush

Scoop NYC is taking things slowly—its second store in Chicago, just opened in the Gold Coast, comes about four years after the company entered Chicago with its Bucktown location at 1702 North Milwaukee.

So what’s different about the new store?  The 4,800-square-foot Gold Coast store reflects an updated version of Scoop, says Heidi Hoelzer, the buyer director and divisional merchandise manager. “We will open the store with our best product and brands and, after spending more time with the Gold Coast Scoop customer, we will edit as necessary. I think we will see more tourists in our Gold Coast store than we do in Bucktown, with a higher demand for designer items,” says Hoelzer.

For this reason, the Gold Coast Scoop store will add Roberto Cavalli and Missoni to its designers roster, which includes Helmut Lang, Alice & Olivia, Free City, Burberry, Camilla Skovgaard, Anya Hindmarch, Zac Posen, Dsquared, Billy Reid and Simon Spurr. “From the best shirt, denim, blazer, cocktail dress, or beach cover-up to a strappy sandal, we have it all under one roof for men and women,” Hoelzer says.

Under that roof are two stories of men’s and women’s merchandise, with women’s clothing, accessories and shoes on the first floor and a glass staircase leading to menswear on the second. A 375-square-foot terrace provides event space, and Scoop expects to host a book signing event for the authors of “Who What Wear,” as well as trunk shows and charity events. (Sarah Alo)

Scoop NYC, 1011 North Rush, (312)649-9880

Stephanie Sack

By Sarah Alo

Like many women, I love shoes. But like many, I have trouble finding a pair that satisfies the quadruple whammy of shoe needs: comfort, style, affordability and—most importantly—availability. Especially for us women of substantial foot size, it’s rare that a store carries larger offerings, let alone in the sale section. But let us all rejoice: Bucktown’s new boutique Violette, 2031 North Damen, offers all that and more.

Owner Stephanie Sack says she has had a fantastic response since her opening at the end of May, in part because customers from her plus-size clothing boutique, Vive la Femme, have been pleading for shoes.

Violette only carries shoe sizes 7-12, and specifically stocks up on larger sizes. “I’ve been finding clothes that didn’t exist for nine years, so I knew I could find shoes too,” Sack says. She feigns outrage at the thought of carrying smaller sizes. “I don’t open a business to ape what others do, I open a business to set the standard.”

Over the years at Vive la Femme, Sack’s heard regular customer requests for lingerie, wedding and shoes; she found shoes to be the most democratic. “Vive is for the stylish women of size in Chicago, and Violette is for the stylish women of Chicago,” Sack declares. Read the rest of this entry »

The British are coming, indeed! With over 300 stores in the UK and more than 100 international locations, the British women’s retail clothing giant Topshop (along with its other half for men, Topman) is moving into Chicago on Michigan Avenue in September. In honor of its impending arrival, Space519, one of the retailers in the 900 North Michigan shops, is hosting a two-month-long Topman pop-up shop inside its store.

Space519 opened the Topman pop-up store (or as they call it, shop-in-shop) at the beginning of June, and it will stay there through the end of July. “We’re launching this to get everyone excited,” says Jim Wetzel, co-owner of Space519. The store will receive new styles of Topman every week that are exclusive to the States. Right now, Wetzel says, the style is more focused and conservative, “but it gets funkier as the summer goes on.”

Just like at Space519, which sells ready-to-wear, books, furniture, apothecary and more, Topman merchandise will vary greatly at its temporary home. The first round of styles has a 1970s dandy British flair and includes vintage Timex watches, a navy suit, floral button-down shirts, camouflage jackets and ties, classic pocket squares and cardigans, and even a pair of mid-thigh-length swim trunks with a California and Hawaii surfer dude vintage postage-stamps print.

“Since the collection is so vast, we can really bring a lot in,” Wetzel says. “We have everything from swim trunks to suits.” Wetzel says he is particularly fond of the suits Topman offers, which cost only around $250. But, his personal favorite in Topman’s stock is their shoes, which he says are “especially cool.” He also says the floral button downs feel really British and fresh—a little bit dandy and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. Read the rest of this entry »

A vegan tattoo by Brian Thomas Wilson from Scapegoat Tattoo

It’s no surprise that going vegan involves making sacrifices: in food, clothing, shoes—but what about body art?

Tattoo ink, none of which is approved by the FDA, is essentially a thinner acrylic paint made of glycerin, which is often derived from animal fat. Black ink in particular can be made with shellac, a resin secreted by a female lac bug, or carbon, often made with charred animal bone.

So, where can a good Chicago vegan get inked? A quick Google search for “vegan tattoo Chicago” brings up few results other than message boards asking the same question. One directs readers to Patrick Cornolo, who runs Speakeasy Custom Tattoo in Wicker Park.

But Cornolo stopped using vegan ink not too long after he first experimented with it five or six years ago. He still gets a few emails a month requesting it, but says he didn’t like the results he got with the set of vegan ink he tested.

“My only problem was the consistency; it’s a little bit thicker. My job is to put the stuff in efficiently and quickly so it heals properly,” he explains. The ink was thicker than he was used to, and thus had to be handled more slowly. “Since I’m not a vegan myself it wasn’t a big priority—I wasn’t going to compromise my technique.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Sarah Alo

Paul Wilson, the store manager of the San Francisco store, says there’s no “cool guy” vibe at Chrome, which just opened its third location, in Chicago’s Wicker Park. Most of the staff and many of the customers have tattoos and piercings, but they are just as welcoming to a soccer mom as they are to an inked biker.

“Chicago is an urban city whose culture we identify with as a brand—tough and no-nonsense on the outside, but friendly and welcoming on the inside,” Meghan Litchfield, the head of retail at Chrome, says. “Also, we have a huge fan base in Chicago—we received hundreds of letters and Facebook posts from Chicago fans asking us to open up shop there,” she says.

Chrome has been growing exponentially in the past few years. Though it’s still a small business (twelve people at the San Francisco home office and fifteen in the California factory), the company had half that amount only three years ago.

Litchfield lists three main goals upon opening a Chrome store: support their local dealers, become part of the community and throw raging parties, which they plan to do every third Thursday of the month. Read the rest of this entry »

By Brian Hieggelke

That I don’t regularly write about store renovations for the Chicago outlets of multibillion-dollar out-of-town corporations should come as little surprise, but this one is personal: back in the summer of 1980, I worked in the Marshall Field’s store at Water Tower Place, commuting each day by train from my home in Joliet.

Times are always heady when you’re eighteen, but those were special. The mating of disco and punk rock spawned new wave and hip-hop, fashion was becoming a mainstream obsession, thanks to the innovation of designer jeans—nothing came between Brooke Shields and her Calvins, and the mighty Vanderbilt fortune became synonymous with an embroidered little swan on denim—and the recent movie hit, “American Gigolo,” which made Giorgio Armani a household name. Water Tower Place was a fresh phenomenon, just five years old or so, half familiar—a shopping mall in that medium’s heyday—and half exotic—it was vertical, and located in the big city not the suburbs, with  over-the-top stores like Fiorucci that exuded exotic decadence. Suburban kids like me felt cool cruising its escalators and eating giant sandwiches at the Levy brothers’ D.B. Kaplan’s Delicatessen. A couple of years later, a teenage Andrew McCarthy would bang the MILF Jacqueline Bisset in its glass elevator in an iconic scene from the otherwise forgettable film “Class.” Somehow, the whole thing—the music, the culture, the fashion—seemed to come together at Water Tower Place. Especially if you were eighteen. Read the rest of this entry »

As much of Chicago sleeps on a Thursday night, Vertigo Sky Lounge is abuzz. High above the city, its inhabitants are paradoxically “digging the underground.” RAW Natural Born Artists, an independent country-wide arts organization that selects and provides a platform for independent creatives, is holding one of its grassroots showcases, one of seventeen such events held around the country each month to spotlight new talent.

A DJ spins in a buzzing corner of the room. Photographs, drawings and paintings cover the glass walls, and the crowd, well-dressed friends of the artists and guests from Art Chicago, appear to be suspended above the city lights. A little after 10pm, the crowd is asked to part and form a path for the upcoming fashion show. Ariya Sasaki, a University of Chicago student in the Geographical Studies department, is about to debut her Spring/ Summer Collection, which will include t-shirts that she has designed for Japan Relief—she was born in Kyoto and raised in Berkeley. “This collection is very much inspired by what is happening in Japan—thinking about global energy and being more conscious of how fabric and textiles are constructed,” she’d said over coffee earlier. “I am writing my B.A paper on fair-trade fashion.” Sasaki is also the co-founder and director of JAPAN Relief and Rebuild committee, and found her fashion feet in MODA (the UofC’s fashion organization), where she is artistic director.

It was at their annual fashion show in the Cultural Center that Sasaki’s designs were first spotted by RAW. “I was so surprised [that they chose me]. I feel like Chicago has so many art students and people who actually study fashion,” she says. “All my models are U of C students and U of C grads. I think it’s really great that I’m able to involve so many people who wouldn’t necessarily be part of the fashion world.” (Lauren Kelly-Jones)

As an English girl on this side of the pond, two things came to mind amidst the hullabaloo over the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge: first, vicious jealousy because Kate stole my favorite prince and, second, how on earth was one to properly celebrate in America?

Over here, just a hop, skip and transatlantic flight from Buckingham Palace, local “wedding guests” gathered a few hours after the very early morning nuptials for an afternoon tea. The Four Seasons Hotel hosted “Crumpets and Couture: A Royal Wedding Fashion Tea” to celebrate the happy couple and give us an occasion to dress up, in our hats, just like the Brits.

The seventh-floor Seasons restaurant was filled to the brim as Royal Wedding footage streamed on two flat-screen televisions beneath the chandeliers, beautifully clothed women (and three very nice men) sat at little tables and sipped rosé champagne, tea and ate delicacies inspired by Will and Kate’s palates. Petite scones, sticky toffee tea bread, smoked salmon and caviar sandwiches, toasted crumpets and chocolate petits fours were nestled among other hors d’oeuvres on white china stands. Fit for a King, eh? Read the rest of this entry »

Rows and rows of artisans line the walls of a local rock club on a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon at the craft market series known as Urban Folk Circuit. It’s a labyrinth of creativity filled with rings made out of buttons, hand-painted china, jewelry made from beer bottles, knitted purses and scarves, photography, prints, soap, paper goods and much more.

Local artist Mary Lee Banie makes handmade classic purses out of vintage fabrics she finds at thrift stores. Banie says today is a slow day for her but she still manages to hand out a lot of business cards to people perusing the market. “Compared to the [craft markets] I’ve done in the past, this is a much younger crowd, which is good for me and I know a lot of the vendors here are saying the same thing,” Banie says.

Jess Duff and Kelli Wefenstette, old hands in the independent craft community, initiated this year-round craft market series. Duff says the idea for Urban Folk Circuit came about last summer when she and Wefenstette were doing summer shows. “Those summer shows are so long and it lasts all weekend. We wanted something shorter and easier that could go on throughout the year.” Read the rest of this entry »