Photography courtesy of Your Friend's Apartment
Former fashion rebranding consultant Megan McCalla is celebrating the grand opening of her vintage store Your Friend’s Apartment (2617 Cherokee) this Saturday, October 1.
As the name implies, the vintage store is meant to reflect the inviting vibe of an elegant, hip apartment. She set up the space, filled with natural light, to mirror her home in many ways: Living room home goods are situated toward the front of the store, and vintage belts, purses, and shoes are toward the back. As a collector herself, McCalla set out to provide customers with a curated assortment of items that they wouldn’t typically find in St. Louis.
“It's not like walking into an antique shop where it's just all kind of thrown together,” McCalla says. “Your Friend’s Apartment and the front section is more like the living area, where you have your dining room table, your couch, your chairs, artwork on the wall... It's a lot of things I love in an apartment-like setting.”
Photography courtesy of Your Friend's Apartment
A Fashionable Fit
While growing up in Prairietown, Illinois, 20 minutes north of Edwardsville, she often found herself sifting through the racks of local thrift stores, searching for clothes to re-create fashion outfits that she saw in the media. “People would ask me where I got my clothes from,” McCalla recalls, “and I’d be like, ‘Well, you actually can’t get it anywhere, but I got it at a flea market in Long Beach.’”
After graduating from Mizzou as a journalism major in 2009, McCalla set out to pursue a career in the fashion world and moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as a public relations representative with “hundreds of brands.” She later moved to New York City for a brief time to style, manage, and do work with New York Fashion Week events, before returning to L.A. and helping rebrand Misa Los Angeles. “That was my launching point to do my own consulting," says McCalla, who worked with a range of clients on photoshoot production and demo castings in NYC and L.A.. "From there, it just kind of grew organically.”
Opening Shop
Despite the rush of the big cities, McCalla held on to a dream of opening up her own vintage and clothing store. “In the back of my mind, opening a vintage store was always something I was going to do," McCalla says. "It wasn't a matter of if—it was a matter of when."
Then, this July, McCalla decided to move return to St. Louis and follow that dream. McCalla knew that St. Louis was where she wanted to open her first business. It's the perfect balance between a large and small city, she says, providing plenty to do while living close to family. After finding the space (which previously housed Cherokee Street Gallery), she knew she'd found the right fit.
Already, she's opened the doors during the past two weeks to help gather customer insights. Feedback has been positive so far, she says, and she's looking forward to the future. “I want to see it grow organically,” McCalla says. “I’m keeping an eye on the next year or two and growing it, getting the word out and seeing where things go naturally.”
