Condor’s Store Owner on Local Designers, Eccentric Accessories
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Nolita, NY – The road to owning a boutique was a long and winding one—literally—for Loriann Smoak, the founder of Condor in Nolita. The Carmel, California native came to New York on her own at just 14 years old to work in the fashion closet for Mirabella magazine, and returned for a series of summer gigs before enrolling in FIT and eventually graduating from The New School.
Afterwards, “I took a break from New York—went back to the West Coast and then took some time off to figure out what’s next, and decided I wanted to open up a store.” In terms of her design aesthetic, Smoak was strongly influenced by the role of nature in fashion, “but nature in a way that’s just this much more chic presentation, versus the more granola look, you know what I mean? That sounds really cliché, but in terms of nature prints, done in a way that’s very cosmopolitan.”
From those ideas, and a 20-country traveling stint “to look for unique merchandise,” came Condor. Read on to learn why she named her store after a mythical bird and why she decided to get a store bunny named Merlin.