I bought tickets for the Garb tour as a birthday present for my 16 yr. old daughter so she could do…read moresome school clothes shopping (she prefers thrift stores over department stores so the boutique/vintage aspect was right up her ally). My sister and her 7 yr. old daughter came with us. Our fashionista guide, Travis, was in the store when we arrived and gave us our cute Garb totes. We had the misfortune of booking our tour on what was about the hottest weekend in downtown SD in probably the 20 years I've lived here. In fact, half our tour group dropped out before we even left Be Beauty, but we were game and had a great time. It was fun discovering unique boutiques and exploring Little Italy and downtown on foot. We even discovered some great furniture and antiques stores in Little Italy I would have never known existed if we didn't walk past them.
Travis was awesome, very fun and personable! He had a great background in fashion and design, which really enhanced our experience with him, and gave good feedback. He was also totally flexible and really tailored the tour to what we wanted to do. We made a few pit stops for cold drinks (did I mention it was 100 degrees?), cruised through a really cool furniture store on India St., we spent a lot of time in a couple of the stores and he never rushed us.
The shop owners and clerks were very welcoming and gave us an introduction and little history or background on the shop, they all had cool drinks and some had little snacks for us (key word is 'little' - this is not a food tour so don't expect to really get fed). The 25% discount at each shop was great; I think we made purchases in nearly every shop. Our favorites were:
Kapreeza - the owner of this hidden gem stocks her shop with unique bras, panties, and swim wear from Europe and also hand makes a lot of her stock. She has truly beautiful merchandise and stocks large and hard to fit sizes in bras and swim suits. She gave my daughter (who is a hard to fit 32DD) a custom bra fitting and found her a couple of great quality bras that were very reasonably priced - even better with the discount (on par with Victoria's Secret pricing). Plus, the owner will honor the 25% off for the entire following week if you go back!
Vocabulary - fun fashions, unique jewelry and accessories. My sister found a beautiful pleated navy dress here in the price range of what you'd pay at Macy's.
De Marcus - this was our favorite I think. Interesting and funky selections, the owner also custom makes evening gowns. The clerk, Randall, told us they were going to start a rental program for the evening gowns. Thinking that's where we'll go for prom next year!
I loved the bamboo sheets in Cariloha but will have to save up for those! At the end, we decided to skip Café 21 and opted to go to Chocolat on Fifth for dinner and gelato (we'd promised my niece). All told, between my daughter and me we ended up with some nice pieces - a bohemian skirt, a cute sundress, pair of fun orchid color jeans, 2 tops, 2 high quality bras - in the neighborhood of $350. All the shops honor the discount through the day if you are undecided and want to go back after the tour. The whole experience, the reasonable price ranges, and the 25% discounts were great! I'd do it again with girlfriends, sisters, my daughter.
Tips: Wear very comfortable shoes and clothes - there is a lot of walking (we all wore flip flops and shorts or casual skirts/sundresses. I parked in an all day lot on Kettner and Date for $10, which was a good decision. Bonus - the Little Italy Farmer's Market is on Sat. and we cruised up Date Street tasting samples and stopped for Indian veggie samosas and an iced coffee on the way to the meet-up shop. At the end of the day, after we ate dinner in the Gaslamp, we debated catching a pedi-cab back, but felt rested up and it had cooled down quite a bit, so we decided to walk off the gelato and hoofed it back to the car.
*While Garb does not recommend young children on the tour I will say my 7 yr. old niece was a total trouper and did great on the whole tour. She loved the "big girl" time and hanging out in the dressing rooms advising us. The little snacks at the shops also helped!
**Bonus tip: we actually did their companion Bite Food Tour as a family with three teens a year or so ago and we loved that. We ate our way through the Gaslamp and learned quite a bit of interesting downtown history (discovered Krust Pizza!). Recommend the Gaslamp tour.
