Shopping

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Dynamite Angel: Shoebox Soigné

“I have a rich fantasy life, I dress up to pick up Chinese food,” says Dynamite Angel store-owner and musician Carolyn Wallace, looking around her recently opened, 250-square-foot jewel box of a space in New Preston, Connecticut. As customers came streaming in on a perfect fall day, Wallace gave each

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Derwin's: Still Natty After All These Years

The seeds for R. Derwin Clothier’s in Litchfield, now run by a whole brood of Derwins, were sown more than fifty years ago from far, far away: Los Angeles, where patriarch Richard Derwin worked his way up the retail ladder as a buyer for several famous, now- defunct department

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Joshua Howe Design: Machine Age Organic

Lighting and furniture designer Joshua Howe, covered neck to toe in a rubber welding suit (head protected simply in a dark blue oversized ski cap), greets me in the middle of a narrow, bumpy, tree-crowded Chatham off road. He motions me to follow him onto a rocky private road, and

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Oliphant: In Living Color

Cara Hotchkiss, jewelry designer and owner of the Litchfield store Oliphant, has always had a relentless penchant for color. “It's like a candy store. I love color, I’m not afraid of it.” With those bold, bright, blazing hues, Hotchkiss – London-born, San Francisco bred, Litchfield-based but always globe

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Fashion Alert: BerkChique, a Pop-Up Resale Shop Redux

Left, Bonnington in Ivan Grundahl, $350. Right, vintage Victor Costa, $200. Some of us want clothes that whisper nice things about us. And some of us want only as many of them as we need to get by. Retired attorney Vicki Bonnington, far left, comes at clothing from an entirely

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Otto Leuschel's Old-Fashioned Germantown Variety Store

Some people boast of having lived in an area when it “hit," like Soho in the ’70s, or, more locally, Great Barrington, when Smithsonian named it the best small town in America. Next on the "hit" list: Germantown, if Otto Leuschel has his way; on June 28

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Hillsdale General Store: A 21st Century Country Emporium

The words "general store" function like a Rorschach Test: Everyone conjures up a different image of the quintessential rural retail experience. But let's face facts: Now that places like CVS and Cumberland Farms sell everything from eggs and milk to shoe polish and work gloves, the

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The Art of Shopping: Working Warren with a Pair of Pros

We all shop, but shopping with someone who actually makes a living buying stuff is an entirely different game. For one thing, the pros notice subtleties we pikers would be likely to overlook, such as the fine print on the $900 price tag dangling from a '50s floor lamp

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Privet House Hits a Bullseye with Pop-Up Shops at Target

Do you remember the movie The Miracle on 34th Street when Macy's Santa Claus, who believed he was the real Kris Kringle, advised the department store's customers to shop at Gimbel's for certain items? In the same counterintuitive spirit,  Rural Intelligence is encouraging you

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McTeigue & McClelland Are in the Business of Enchantment

For nearly a century following its founding in 1895, McTeigue & Co. was one of the most respected hallmarks in the fine jewelry trade, selling only to elite retailers such as Tiffany & Co., which in 1990 acquired and absorbed the family-owned business into its own. Yet as he was

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LOCAL's Economy Buoyed By Chocolate Trickle Down

"We are doing very well," says Michele O'Hana, via a crackling Skype connection from her childhood home in West Cork, Ireland, where, as usual, she is spending the summer with her family. "Repeat that please?," I shout, certain I must have heard wrong.  In

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Style Shopping: All About Weave

by Scott Baldinger One of the great things about Hudson, New York, is that you can literally fall out of bed (or your car, if you don’t live or weekend here) and into a new and wondrous world of the decorative arts. Sometimes you may even find worlds within

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