Shirley’s Mercantile Finds Its Groove with Younger Shoppers

When Lauren Farrar swung open the doors to Shirley’s Mercantile last month, she expected the usual antique browsers: collectors, longtime locals, baby boomers with a soft spot for patina.

What she didn’t expect? A wave of younger shoppers flipping through vintage books — not for the stories, but for the color palettes.

Farrar, 36, laughed at the discovery. The design trend, she told the Post & Courier, has younger customers “buying books based solely on their cover color,” creating those monochrome, Instagram-perfect bookshelves popping up across curated living rooms.

It’s a shift powered in part by digital tastemakers like Charleston creator Maddie Simes (@maddieincharleston). With thousands of followers across Instagram and TikTok, Simes regularly spotlights Lowcountry thrift haunts. One of her clips rating local thrift stores pulled nearly 100,000 views.

“I think in a world where we are so highly visible… a lot of people my age are looking towards the uniqueness of pieces found in thrift stores,” Simes told the Post & Courier. “It gives a sense of originality and difference.”

Farrar feels that influence daily. “Social media like TikTok has made a difference,” she told the Post & Courier. “That generation is definitely good at sharing things that spark interest in other people.”

Farrar’s path to Shirley’s Mercantile began long before Maybank Highway. She sold antiques in Nashville starting in 2015, running an Etsy shop and maintaining booths in local malls before moving to Charleston in 2021.

Terrace Oaks Antique Mall — the city’s oldest antique hub — quickly became her local anchor. “Terrace Oaks Antiques felt like the perfect mixture of styles but still true to antiques and vintage pieces,” she told the Post & Courier.

She originally applied for a vendor booth. Instead, good timing handed her something better: a vacant storefront once occupied by a seamstress. The standalone space let her build the kind of hybrid shop she’d dreamed of — vintage, gifts, and now coffee.

She named it for her grandmother, Shirley.

Shirley’s Mercantile is one of two thrift-meets-coffee newcomers in greater Charleston this year, joining Herbert’s on Reynolds Avenue. Farrar’s shop doesn’t carry vintage clothing, but the shelves brim with home décor, dishware, books, and locally made gifts.

And with doors opening at 7:30 a.m., the coffee bar — serving Charleston roaster Foresight Coffee — draws both early risers and casual browsers.

Farrar sources her pieces through estate sales, thrift shops and the occasional online auction, gravitating toward 1920s–40s craftsmanship. “I’m not really a ‘paint the furniture’ person,” she told the Post & Courier. “I like to keep things true to their original form.”

Charleston, she added, has always been a natural fit for antiques: tourists chasing take-home history, locals looking for something charming without the sticker shock of modern furniture (which climbed 4.7% in price this year).

Behind the counter, Farrar is often joined by her husband, Andrew, and their daughter, Lumen, who has tagged along on antique hunts since infancy. The goal now is to shape the shop into the kind of community hub her grandmother would have loved — a place to linger, sip, browse, discover.

And judging by the recent flurry of Instagram posts from younger visitors, that vision is already taking root.

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