Caravan launched in 2012 to the heavy foot traffic during the Salsa on St. Clair festival. The opening date also marked the two-year anniversary of Caravan’s companion store, Gypsy, located one block east. Caravan is the brightly lit shabby chic twin shop to Gypsy’s dark maze of romantic and bohemian attire. Both vintage shops are owned and curated by Donnetta Galloway, a designer and collector who brings over 30 years of experience to the trade.
While Gypsy was beginning to build a name for itself, Donnetta wanted an opportunity to showcase her divergent stylistic tastes. “I like that sort of pastel, girly, roses and china stuff,” she says. That aesthetic, however, wasn’t a good fit for Gypsy’s lush fabrics and rich tones, but found its home within Caravan.
Donnetta named her boutique after the opulent and intricately carved Romani wagons, home to travelling gypsies. She has always been attracted to bohemian, mixed-textile fashions. “[Gypsies] will pick up a velvet shawl and mix it with a rose printed vintage fabric, and then they’ll mix in some silver with it,” she says. “It’s a really European way of decorating and living. You mix something that’s 400 years old with something you bought yesterday.” Caravan’s mish-mash of both the old and new, encourages exactly that experimentation.
