Shopping in New Iberia

Amid shelves lined with curiosity-inspiring playthings, and plenty of areas for concentrated toy testing, owners Aimee and Craig Gremillion can be spotted chatting with customers about their toy needs. The cheerful duo stocks their neighborhood shop, located within Citiplace, with puzzles, workbooks, arts-and-crafts kits, and games that, like scratch 'n' sniff vocabulary tests, encourage children to equate learning and creativity with fun. They rely on trusted toy brands such as Lego, Toysmith, and Fisher-Price and boast complimentary gift-wrapping services as well as complimentary personalization for select products.

The team behind the mom-and-pop Fabric Warehouse started their textile adventure in 1994 with 1,000 square feet of space. Since then, the store has moved to a 12,000-square-foot building packed with colorful indoor and outdoor fabrics, along with a variety of home decorations. Fabric Warehouse's two professional designers have the knowledge and expertise to help their clients customize bedding and drapery for master bedrooms or create an animal-print theme for a Neolithic-style man cave.

Meta Exchange owners Wendy and Michael Dolan gather designer apparel from premium brands, including 7 For All Mankind, J. Crew, and Abercrombie & Fitch, inside their sunlit store. The Dolans acquire some items on consignment and buy others outright, stocking racks with a wide variety of in-season apparel for men, women, and sentient store mannequins. A rotating cast of accessories highlights colorful jewelry and like-new handbags from brands such as Marc by Marc Jacobs.

Young women send hangers of gauzy tops and bold, colorful dresses clacking across Frock Candy’s colorful racks, where designs hang in four storefronts in Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Destin, Florida. Independent and well-known brands, such as Chinese Laundry, Qupid, Theme, and Lush supply casual and special-occasion dresses, prim and everyday tops, and shoes both saucy and demure to an inventory which rotates as tastes change. Frock Candy’s style experts forecast trends such as fresh colors and trending images of celebrity pets for each season.

After searching high and low for well-fitting, stylish undergarments in the Baton Rouge area, Leila Blumberg and Heather Savoy opened Prive’ Lingerie Boutique with equal attention to comfort and fashion. The boutique, which draws its name from the French word for “personal, private, and intimate,” carries lingerie by Spanx, Cosabella, and Stella McCartney, as well as new lines from Body Wrap, Sassybax, and Verena. Upon request, the shop's trained specialists unfurl measuring tapes and carnival-ride height placards to measure customers for a proper fit.

Catherine and Scott McKearn leave no corner of the world unsearched in their quest to discover artisan furniture builders. The couple frequents faraway destinations in India, Indonesia, China, and Morocco to unearth beautiful solid-wood furniture to import directly to their three shops. In order to save their customers money, they buy pieces wholesale and ship them in 40-foot containers, bypassing both middlemen and price-gun-wielding pirates. Their furniture ranges in style from industrial to French country, and the eclectic selection rotates every few weeks to accommodate new shipments.