SHOPPING LIST

LAUREL CANYON

Thursday night marked the grand opening of Laurel Canyon, a vintage boutique in SoHo that is like heaven’s closet for NYC-bound California girls at heart. Neil Young pipes through the background while handpicked jean jackets, plaid cowboy shirts and long flowered dresses hang over an outstanding assortment of cowboy boots.

Every piece in the store exhibits that added value of vintage—not just for the nostalgia, but for the workmanship. Just blocks away from the masses of splatter-painted leggings at Topshop, exquisite dresses with tiny pintucks and crocheted-straps, accented with velveteen ribbons and Mexicali embroidery feel more than fairly priced, mostly in the $160 range. A flutter-sleeved black one is scattered with hot-pink and lilac blossoms that fall into full bloom at a floor-grazing hem, begging to be twirled.  

“We wanted to create something that’s an expression of our friendship and our history,” said co-owner David Munk, who met his partner and best friend Elisa Casas in the NYU dorms in the early ‘80s. The two immediately connected through their common love of music, flea markets and road trips. They were apart for a while when David worked in the music industry and Elisa started her own clothing label, and today their experiences combine perfectly at Laurel Canyon, where old photos of Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt records and baseball shirts from Crosby, Stills & Nash remind us how in the southern California canyons of the ‘70s, fashion and music were inextricably intertwined.

Elisa pointed out a poster commemorating Carole King’s week at The Troubadour—a Brooklyn girl falling in love with the music scene of Southern California. Lucky for us, now David and Elisa are bringing a little piece of Laurel Canyon back to New York.

Laurel Canyon, 63 Thompson Street, NY, NY 212.343.7090

–Jenni Avins