Shopping in The Crossings

In 1994, a small boutique called Studio LX opened its doors in downtown South Miami with the goal of supplying women with trendy and affordable designer clothing. Today, the boutique’s success is measured in six additional stores, including Blush Boutique in Palmetto Bay. In Blush Boutique’s airy, minimalist store, a colorful array of chic designer dresses, shirts, and jeans dangle from racks along the walls, and accessories line round white tables and glass displays. The helpful staff is on hand to provide style and fit advice, such as how to ensure that high-end socks fit snugly on the hands of children's puppeteers.

Tom and Ryoko Nadeau founded Nadeau in 1991 with a goal of providing customers with quality home furniture and a wealth of product knowledge. The business quickly evolved into something larger: The duo now has 19 retail stores and a team of buyers who travel the world in search of one-of-a-kind, handcrafted pieces of solid-wood furniture. Nadeau has earned mentions from numerous media outlets—including the Washington Post, CBS Chicago, and Charleston Home magazine—for its unique selection, which includes a cache of more than 6,000 pieces ranging from rare side tables and chairs to dining sets. Pieces are never mass-produced, allowing customers to bring the flavor of different cultures into their homes or provide an adopted tree with a new friend.

Chris and Karen Williams combined more than 25 years of optical experience when they created Specs Appeal Optical and furnished it with designer frames and experienced eye-care professionals. The boutique's hand-selected licensed opticians and sales staff treat each pair of eyes that wander in through the door with absolute care and attention. The team works together by first providing eye exams and then helping direct clients to the frames best suited to their face shape and personal style. Customers select frames from among such sought-after brands as Chanel, Gucci, Prada, Ray-Ban, and Oliver Peoples. Those interested in contacts can park themselves at attractive rosewood stations where they can get fitted with contacts or evaluate their ocular swag in the desktop mirrors.

Praised by the Miami New Times as 2010's Best One-Stop Art Depot, Jerry's Artarama is a sprawling 20,000-square-foot artists' oasis with a bounteous inventory of creative supplies. Aisles teem with the store's own proprietary product lines such as SoHo and Creative Mark, alongside imported products from around the world acquired through Jerry's relationships with international manufacturers. The store also stocks specialty and hard-to-find items that are rarely carried by large chain stores, such as specialty brushes for portraitists and extra-wide forks for professional mashed-potato sculptors.

The siren call of allCanes' massive collection of Miami Hurricanes clothing, memorabilia, and accessories entices not only fans to wander its spaces, but also pro athletes of the past and present. Since converting from a sporting goods store to a Hurricanes-only shop in the mid 80's, football greats have brought family and friends to outfit them in green and orange. NFL players, such as Willis McGahee and Ken Dorsey, walked between racks of gear where greats including Warren Sapp, Ray Lewis, and Jessie Armstead once signed autographs.

While big name players may draw crowds, it's allCanes' stock that wins the day. From the front door to the back wall, every inch of wall, shelf, and rack space teems with Hurricanes apparel from brands such as Nike and My U. Hurricanes baseball caps line racks set in between panoramic shots of the stadium and beanies, while racks hold popular fan t-shirts, such as "The U Invented Swagger." In all, around 1,000 UM-related items call the shop home during football season.

At each Big Frog Custom T-Shirts & More location across the United States, professional graphic artists print high-quality, custom designs onto a variety of products including men's and women's T-shirts and sweatshirts, toddlers' onesies, and clothing for canines. Rather than ironing or screenprinting its tees, the team uses a process called direct-to-garment printing, dying images directly into fabric to ensure that the garments won't crack, fade, peel, or develop a sense of self. The staff also eschews harsh chemicals in favor of environmentally friendly ones, such as water-based ink.

The artists price their products at a consistent rate, don't charge setup fees, and won't increase their costs, even if the desired artwork is highly complex, demands hourly compliments, or requires multiple colors. They'll happily print either a customer-created design or one of their own onto one or 300 T-shirts at once, and they turn around most in-stock items in 24 hours.