5 Towns To Shop This Summer

Buy The Best Of Michigan in These 5 Towns with the Family

Summertime is a great opportunity to spend quality shopping time with the entire family! Whether you’re an artsy group, a family of fashionistas, or a bunch of foodies, there’s something for every shopping squad to enjoy this summer!

Downtown Detroit

This is for the family wanting to shop everything local! Find everything from flowers, to food, to handmade goods, and streets that are sometimes lined with food trucks and live musicians and performers. Eastern Market in Detroit is actually one of the oldest and largest year-round public markets in the U.S.

Here are some dates when you should visit:

  • Shed 5 Flea-July 14th & August 11th. Located in Shed 5 of the Eastern Market, this event offers not only handmade items, but vintage, re-purposed, and salvaged goods as well!
  • Summer Markets-This is an ongoing event open every Tuesday, Sunday, & Thursday night June through September. Shop local art, antiques, jewelry, and more!

Downtown Ann Arbor

This is for the family who wants an eye-opening shopping trip! With a vast array of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, boutiques, markets, and more this town is sure to broaden your horizons!

Here are some events you must see at least once:

  • Ann Arbor Art Fair-July 19th-22nd. This event showcases 1,100 of the finest artists from across the country, with a variety of artwork in every price range.
  • Ann Arbor Antiques Market-Weekends from April to October. For more than 40 years, this market has offered quality antiques & collectibles from every decade.

Downtown Birmingham

This is for the family who wants a mix of everything! Birmingham has everything from independent boutiques, to well-known shops like Lululemon. Try any of their terrific cafes, bistros, and rooftop restaurants when shopping leaves you famished!

Here are some shops we suggest:

  • Anthropologie-While there’s plenty Anthropologies around, we just love this location! This big, bright, and beautifully merchandised location also offers home decorating services.
  • West Elm-This store can be found all over, but we thoroughly enjoy visiting our Birmingham location! You can uniquely decorate everyone’s room, along with the rest of the house in just this one store.

Downtown Lexington

This is for the family who wants a mini shopping vacation! Lexington has something for everyone in the family. With its beach-themed boutiques, souvenir shops, ice cream parlors, and restaurants, it’s a total tourist destination! Here are some stops you must make during your visit:

  • The Painted Paddle-This bright yellow building is filled to the brim with nautical, coastal, and quirky things from front to back!
  • Lexington General Store-This general store blows all others out of the water! From candies, to toys, to kitchen goods, to local Michigan goodies, to nautical decor, this two level store has a little bit of everything!

Downtown Rochester

This is for the family wanting to shop it all on one block! With stores and food stops lining both sides of a mile-long road, it’s the perfect place to walk the entirety of one side, then shoot across to the other. Not only that, but they have anything you could ever need on that one block.

Make sure you stop in these shops:

  • The Urban Merchant-This whimsical boutique has odd and wonderful things covering every inch of space. It almost feels as though you fell down the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland.
  • Mantra Vie-It’s easy to find something for everyone in this store with its wide selection of loungewear, athletic wear, casual wear, and even beachwear for men, women, and teens!
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Detroit Mommies Expert Contributor
Brittany graduated college with a BFA in Fashion Design & Visual Merchandising. She's spent the past 7 years working directly in the fashion industry starting as a stylist, then moving to visual merchandiser, to retail manager, to the current profession of fashion buyer. She has modeled for fashion shows, media, tv, and magazines to view fashion from the opposite perspective of the designer. She is the creator/owner of her Metro Detroit blog, Bedazzled Britt. There, she covers everything from store openings, to fashion shows, concerts, local events, the North American International Auto Show, you name it! "I write about whatever inspires me in that moment, but I love supporting local fashion most of all. My end goal is to become a well-respected Michigan made fashion designer!"