Brady Street's Anomaly Design Shop is many, many things wrapped up into one pretty little package. It's a boutique packed with home décor, accessories and gifts, a place for furniture, a graphic design company, an art studio -- they've even launched their own flower arranging service.
Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a creative endeavor that owners Carrie Kudronowicz, Sara Schumacher and Dan Petry couldn't execute, and execute with distinctive style.
The shop, which was beautifully transformed from an auto parts store, has been open at 816 E. Brady St. for just over a month and features an eclectic and fluctuating inventory of life's little extras, some of which are PC -- vegan (read: fake leather) handbags and organic baby products -- and others of which are hilariously inappropriate for grandma -- greeting cards that drop F bombs in the cutest ways.
With two MIAD degrees and a stockpile of D.I.Y. work ethic, the Anomaly trio has harnessed the muses to create a shopping experience that is not only unique but also interactive.
"We've sort of become all-encompassing," says Kudronowicz of their innate ability to look at life as one creative endeavor after the next. Have a wedding in your future? Within the 700-sq. ft. space they'd be able to design the invitations with a modern sense of panache, provide the perfect wedding gift, or even arrange the bouquets of flowers for the tables.
"Arranging is like sculpting, but with flowers, just like sewing is like sculpting, but with fabric," says Schumacher "It all sort of works together. It's all the same thing, just with different mediums."
"One day we got the idea that maybe we should silk-screen, so we taught ourselves how so that we could keep expanding," says Kudronowicz. Now, what they silk-screen out of the basement of the new shop one day can be for sale upstairs the next.
Before the dawn of Anomaly, Kudronowicz and Schumacher were in business together out of their home crafting a successful accessories line called Gaudy Girls. Anomaly sells Gaudy Girls items, as well as lines by other local artists, such as Dan Musha's Acme Ceramic Works and Birdcage jewelry. National lines are all independently hip and off-the-cuff cool -- French Bull, Thomas Paul, Fred, Kenneth Wingard.
What's even better than all the eye candy in the split level shop is that, chances are, you can afford to bring some of it home with you. Technically the price points range anywhere from $5 to $300, but really the only items you're going to find in the triple digits are large, one-of-a-kind furniture pieces. Just about everything else -- jewelry, handbags, arm warmers, ceramics, paper products, dishware, you name it -- is priced with surprising frugality.
"We're thrifty," says Schumacher. "We don't like going into a store and finding something you like but it's just not attainable."
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
