Downtown Shops

Just like its drop-dead gorgeous premiere brick-and-mortar store in Venice Beach, the Parachute Portland boutique exemplifies the streamlined brand at its best. Jessica Helgerson Interior Design decorated the space with local artisans and a neutral palette to showcase the company's best-selling bedding, bath, and tabletop collections. The light, clean aesthetic is so welcoming, we can easily spend an entire afternoon here.

This little shopping arcade, lined with minimalist light wood and marked by rustic beams overhead, actually connects the West End (a.k.a. the Ace Hotel) to the Pearl District (a.k.a. Powell’s) with a few great gems in between. On the far end is the Portland hiking boot staple Danner, alongside Self Edge, a cool-kid shop that sells specialty denim from Japan and other far-flung parts of the world. Walking through, you’ll also find Quin Candy, an artisanal candy shop with Portland-exclusive flavors, and Spruce Apothecary, CANOE’s gorgeous take on a beauty shop—while it’s not exclusively clean lines, they carry some of our favorites, like Ursa Major, Fig + Yarrow, and Coola. There’s also excellent ramen, a cute little bakery, and a really great Steven Alan.

Powell’s hardly needs an introduction at this point—the Portland flagship is world’s largest new and used bookstore, with more than one million books inside its walls. The interior is always full of people, but with countless bookshelves to peruse, it's easy to find a quiet reading corner. Definitely take the time to look through the incredible selection of obscure titles and ancient editions in the rare book room.

Poler’s quirky camping gear is a far cry from the flannel-themed gear in your dad's ancient camping bin. Their sleeping bags, apparel, tents, and other outdoor gear are all created with an urban (and yes, a little hipster) sensibility that results in loud, fun graphics and genius hacks, like a sleeping bag you can actually unzip at the feet and wear out to the campfire. The Portland flagship is their only brick-and-mortar.

Stopping at Canoe is practically a requirement of the obligatory stroll through downtown Portland: It occupies prime corner real estate right in the center of town. Inside, you’ll find everything from stunning jewelry, to elegant kitchen goods, to mid-century lighting and tables. There’s also a healthy selection of more light-hearted giftables, like cards, knick-knacks, and coffee table books. Good to know: They offer wedding registries.

When childhood friends-turned-married couple Matt and Carrie Eddmenson brought their warm, inviting Nashville shop to Portland, everything we loved about the original came along with it: from their top-notch selection of jeans, including their own in-house line of American-made Japanese selvedge denim (his and hers), down to the friendly, knowledgeable service and community-centric events. Adding to the Americana ambiance is the wooded interior design, featuring a cedar-lined pine dressing ‘hut’ they blowtorched, sealed, and treated with a Japanese wood-preserving technique.

This eclectic Downtown Portland shop is like a shrine to time-honored American craftsmanship: their selection of new and vintage clothing, home goods, tools, and other necessities are all hand-picked for those with a hands-on, active lifestyle (plus, rugged gear fit for braving the great outdoors, catered specifically to the inclement climate and woodlands-mountains-ocean trifecta of the Pacific Northwest). The storefront itself, outfitted with salvaged wood flooring and reclaimed barn wood walls that nod to Oregon’s rich heritage of manufacturing and agriculture, captures the city’s rustic-meets-contemporary style. There's a shoe-centric outpost in Boise that's worth checking out.