Striped knits, flannels, eye-catching red denim and the best collection of quirky coffee table books surrounded afternoon shoppers, with the sweet tunes of Psychic Ills adding to the ambiance of the outdoor, but in-store experience.
Urban Outfitters' "Store on Tour" has set up shop in Columbia, giving the city a little taste of the company's fall and late summer collections. The mini-store, designed in two shipping containers, is on its first stop of a four-city southeast tour in the Tin Roof parking lot on Senate Street.
"We were looking at the South in general, and really some college towns to show them some love," said Andie Cusick, Urban Outfitters' senior public relations manager. "Columbia is the first city, and it's our first time doing this — so far, so good."
The tour is an effort to reach out to cities that don't have an Urban Outfitters, said Cale Mitchell, the tour's Dockers manager. And the Urban showing is far from a couple of traveling storage containers.
"We don't call it a pop-up as much as a mini-store because it's curated the same way as all the stores," Cusick said. "We want you to feel like you're in an actual Urban Outfitters."
And the inside of the mini Urban does take on the same vibe as the real deal — photographs sit atop the clothing displays, with racks of floral frocks and men's hoodies filling in the center of the 8-by-20-foot space.
Men's Herschel book bags line the tops of clothing cases and blue elephant Baggu grace the women's side of the setup, facing a rack of heart-shaped and Ray Ban-esque patterned sunglasses.
"We're in the fall collection, but we know the South was going to be much warmer than the Northeast," Cusick said. "We've brought stuff from the fall line but also stuff that would fit the South — there are sundresses and sweaters in there.
"It's a neat little edit of what you'd find in the store."
The collection, which includes a beaded lace top and three-quarter length fall dresses, as well as guys' denim and sleeveless, striped tanks, offers students' wardrobes a little alternative quirk.
"It's a different style — it's kind of hipster, and I'm not usually hipster, but you can usually find some really unique pieces," said Kellie Conner, a fourth-year management and marketing student.
An in-store table of iPads also gives customers the chance to order any Urban item online, free of shipping costs.
Urban is also known, and loved, for its housewares and eclectic mix of literature, accessories and offbeat novelties. The front of the mini-store is lined with bracelets and wallets, as well as books, such as "I Hate Everything," "The Quotable Drunkard" and "F in Exams." Tables of fish-eye cameras and Urbanears headphones are set on a table outside of the two makeshift fitting rooms, adjacent to the second, pick-up shipping unit.
Each piece of clothing in the show room has a circular silver tag with an ID number, and customers can pick up their size of each item in the back unit. And, in a twist from traditional outdoor showings, only credit cards are accepted — no cash.
Tortoise & Blonde, a father-son owned and run eyewear company that combines a love of music and chic, stylish prescription and nonpresciption reading and sunglasses has also joined the college-town tour.
Steven Weisfeld, an optometrist and CEO of Tortoise, and his son Evan debuted the online company at Austin's South by Southwest film and music festival a year and a half ago, and have since fitted bands like JukeBox the Ghost, Pearl and the Beard and Savoir Adore with their 15 styles of unisex specs.
"They're very cool, very retro," Steven Weisfeld said. "Some are geek-chic, some are secretary-chic — in this day's style, anything goes."
Each pair of glasses, from start to finish, is $97, with Weisfeld measuring prescriptions and fitting at their "Store on Tour" tent.
"Being a doctor, quality is number one," Weisfeld said.
DRY Soda, a healthier, all-organic soda company, also partnered with Outfitters, serving its seven flavors of four-ingredient, glass-bottle pops. The flavors are meant to be a "nonalcoholic alternative to wine" that pair with different dishes, said Kaitlin Sellereit, the sales and marketing operations coordinator.
The CEO of the company, Sharelle Klaus, founded DRY in 2005 while she was pregnant.
"She would go to a restaurant and water is boring, soda is too sweet and she wanted something that complemented the taste of the food," Sellereit said.
Flavors like blood orange and wild lime — which pair well with fish tacos and pico, according to Sellereit — aim to take a healthier, approximately 60-calorie approach to mainstream flavors like Fanta and Sprite.
Dockers mixed up the scene as well, adding a unique art exhibit — each piece in the collection crafted from Dockers' new Alpha Khaki — to the tour. Four artists, one from each of the touring cities, displayed their art, either created from or displayed on the khaki, which is also sold in blue, gray and beige in the touring store.
Columbia 16-year-old Colton Rabon printed photos of boys modeling the khaki on stretches of the beige fabric. Inkjet prints soaked in water and a heat press brought the fashion-forward works of art to life.
Urban's "Store on Tour" is a mix of all things fashionable, giving shoppers a full, daylong mall trip in one afternoon visit — and there's no need to leave the parking lot.
Columbia's mini-Urban Outfitters will be here through Sunday, open from noon to 8 p.m. each day at 1022 Senate St.
