Style: Fiat Lux
by Dawn Hunt

When the door to Fiat Lux opened last March, co-owners Marie McCarthy and Alexei Angelides couldn’t believe the success their teeny-tiny shop would bring to not only themselves, but also their bustling neighborhood. Wanting to bring a new genre of shop to the area that blurs the borderlines between the Castro, Lower Haight, and Mission districts (or the “Mistro”), these two highly ambitious fashionistas (Marie also owns a tattoo parlor, Soul Patch Tattoo on Haight Street, and Alexei is currently earning his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University) were able to open a shop that met all the jewelry, couture, and designer-vintage needs of the bohemian-defined locals who know how to shop for quality pieces. Located in a beautifully retrofitted brick building, where ivy creeps over the rough exterior, Fiat Lux found a small niche to call home. “We wanted to open an old school boutique with high-quality men’s and women’s clothes and accessories that appealed to the Mission (Castro, Lower Haight) demographic, that would also fill the niche between high-end fashion and crafty,” says Alexei. “We also wanted to primarily feature local designers whose collections were of exceptionally high quality materials and craftsmanship, but still affordable.”