Fresh, airy, beachy, high-fashion. Four ways shoppers describe one of Coronado’s newest boutiques: avenu.
“Avenu is all about the Coronado laid back, beachy, California girl,” said Alexa Hosn, co-owner of, and Buyer for, avenu in Coronado. “We just wanted to be a store that everyone can relate to and that caters to the average Coronado girl that goes to the beach and walks along the avenue.”
And that’s exactly how avenu got its name and where Hosn pulled most of her inspiration from when designing and branding the store. All purchases are placed in vibrant orange bags before shoppers leave the boutique.
Owned and operated by a dynamic mother-daughter duo, avenu offers casual, stylish, lightweight, travel-friendly pieces at an affordable price point, as everything costs less than 200 dollars.
Friendly voices of the store’s staff fill the air as background music encourages you to wander from rack to rack as you browse the stylish collections. Your fingertips will run across the luxurious fabrics as you shift garments from side to side, as if they are dancing in the wind. Let your mind be swept away to foreign lands as you envision yourself in the many light-weight pieces that are inspired by casual wear in European and Asian countries.
The clothing is on cusp of everything ‘high-fashion’, as avenu offers pieces from the latest designers. Concepts for clothing are inspired from Alexa’s traveling adventures to Australia, Italy, Barcelona, and Croatia (just to name a few).
avenu opened in March 2016 in one of Coronado’s beautiful historic buildings located along Orange Avenue, where Kippys resided for decades. Although this boutique airs on the side of young, fresh, and chic, many of the classic fixtures of the building were preserved.
“We peeled away some of the older plaster and flooring. The outside of the building was just painted and we kept the original tiles. We put in new lighting and a sound system,” said Irma Hosn, co-owner of avenu and mother to Hosn. “We wanted to keep it quaint and we didn’t want to make it into a hip/altering experience. We wanted it to be inviting and make everyone feel comfortable and we did that with our colors and the wood and all of the hand-made furniture.”
From the extravagant shoe salon to the display tables, every piece of furniture was custom-designed for the space.
“All of the furniture and everything that is hand-done we designed ourselves. It was a dream of my daughter’s to have a Moroccan, very casual vibe and it’s a fun store to come in to,” said Hosn.
It’s very different from the boutique’s sister store – Paris & Me Boutique.
“Paris & Me has been on the island for over 30 years,” said Hosn. “It’s a very elite, high fashion boutique where avenu is far more casual and dresses the ‘Coronado girl’ for every-day wear.”
avenu is located at 1114 Orange Avenue, Coronado, CA 92118.
