Happy place

A new boutique brings nostalgic feelings of “Up North” to Madison

by

The little shopping block on West Lakeside Street is like revisiting Madison of an earlier era. Businesses there are housed in commercial buildings from the first couple decades of the 20th century. When the small retail space at 404 W. Lakeside St. became available, sisters Megan Schiele and Nicole Howarth knew that it was the right spot to launch the brick-and-mortar version of their online store, Up North Clothing & Jewelry.

“We started looking about a year and a half ago,” says Howarth in a phone interview. “Then COVID started and we got a little anxious.” But their love for the Bay Creek neighborhood shopping block and the Lakeside Street Coffee House next door convinced them that renting it would be the right move. Up North opened on Dec. 2. 

“The neighborhood has been super supportive,” says Howarth. The building has been a gift shop before — The Bohemian Bauble — and more recently a kids' program and a photographer have rented the space. 

The ambience of the block fits well with the concept behind Up North. Though both sisters live in Madison, “we love going up north,” says Howarth, and the store is about that “up north” feeling — a mix of laid-back ease with a preparedness for adventure. “We like the idea that up north is not a specific place on a map,” says Howarth. “We’re trying to capture the feeling.” And right now, with travel restricted, people are longing to recreate those comforting and nostalgic feelings at home, she suggests: “They are yearning for that cozy feeling.”

Howarth and Schiele started Up North three years ago, selling at pop-up markets and craft fairs as well as launching a website. The two shared a space with another business in Waunakee for a while, but Lakeside Street is their first solo storefront. The store features clothing, home goods and jewelry with a loosely-interpreted north country theme. 

Howarth, a freelance graphic designer, designs their T-shirts, sweatshirts, totes and mugs. Their best-selling designs are for a shirt that reads “Up North is My Happy Place” and another that recreates the iconic scene from the border of Wisconsin’s license plates: a sailboat, geese flying, a woods, a red barn.

Howarth’s favorite is a shirt listing the days of the week that substitutes “fish fry” for Friday: “I think it’s kind of funny. And it’s very Wisconsin.”

Many of the store’s Wisco-centric slogans are minimal, yet get beyond the typical tourist catch-phrases to something closer to the heart of the best of the state, even if that’s difficult to distill. Sometimes all you need is the words “Old Fashioned” (as on one shirt style)  to conjure the correct mood and attitude. 

Their graphic items are all in-house designs. They choose other items in their clothing line, like sweaters, with the idea that they “have to be really cozy and comfortable, something that reminds you of what you would wear up north, but also stylish,” says Howarth.

For the holidays, Up North is selling gift sets with such local foods as Nutkrack, Ledger Coffee, and Jazzed-Up Marshmallows of Lake Mills, paired with their own logo candles and coffee mugs. Schiele, who is a pediatric occupational therapist, makes their jewelry, but Howarth says all their work is “a collaborative effort.” Their dad even helps, cutting the wood they need for some projects. 

While the new storefront is small, it’s open with a limit of five masked customers at a time. Store hours are 10 am-6 pm Mon.-Fri., 10 am-4 pm Sat. and 11 am-2 pm. Sun. The shop is also online (where you can also download fun, free graphics like these canning labels) and on Instagram.