The Avenue of Fashion in northwest Detroit has a storied past. High-end clothiers set up shop near Seven Mile Road and Livernois Avenue, becoming a destination for shoppers after World War II. The district’s decline started a couple of decades later. 

Now, a surge of new restaurants and specialty shops have filled vacant storefronts in the area, and many are Black-owned businesses. Algernon Bartell, owner of the Times Square Men’s Custom Clothing Store, set up shop on the Avenue in 2010. Now his family owns many businesses here. Other specialty shops and restaurants are coming.  

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“The restaurants really create the foot traffic,” said Dolphin Michael, who leads the Avenue of Fashion Business Association. “For each restaurant, you might have two, three hundred people come through a day, and they just walk up and down the street.”

The Pink Poodle Bridal shop opened earlier this year on the Avenue. Owner Raeshawn Bumphers opened her first bridal store on Detroit’s east side in 2017 and expanded here with funding from the Motor City Match program. Bumphers had twenty years of experience working with automotive companies and area schools before making a career change. 

“I was planning this business around what I was passionate in,” Bumphers said. “My story is connecting with young girls and women at the … happiest time in their lives.” 

One Detroit’s Bill Kubota visits the Avenue of Fashion and talks with business owners — new and old — about the resurgence of the area known for its shopping and dining.

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