Women’s Clothing Boutique ‘Cinnamon Lifestyle’ Opens in Downtown St. Cloud

ST. CLOUD – A new fashion boutique for women is open for business in downtown St. Cloud.

Cinnamon Lifestyle, located at 30 5^th Avenue South, opened on Wednesday. The shop features a variety of merchandise carefully selected by co-owners and lifelong friends Keyanna Dahlgren and Paige Cordie of St. Cloud.

“We’ve got everything from women’s clothing and accessories to small gifts, if you’re shopping for a friend or your mom,” Dahlgren said. “We’ve got a lot of different styles – we try to keep something for every genre. Whatever vibe you’re trying to go for, we’re going to try to help you find it.”

Dahlgren and Cordie opened Cinnamon Lifestyle as an online store several years ago. The brand quickly developed a following of women via Facebook and Instagram that the women dubbed their “Cinnamon Girl Gang.”

Dahlgren says she and Cordie have different tastes in clothing and often look to one another, along with their customers, for inspiration when selecting their merchandise from a wholesaler. “We ask ourselves if we would wear it,” explained Dahlgren. “We wouldn’t want to put something in here that we wouldn’t want to wear ourselves.”

The women also place an emphasis on remaining budget-friendly – nothing in the shop is over $60.

“We carry an array of quality,” she said. “We ask, ‘can the average girl afford this?’ We have our basics, the things you need in your closet which might be a little bit thinner and good for layering. And, we definitely have our “show stopper” pieces that are higher quality and things you’d want to wear to your company Christmas party or New Year’s Eve. There’s a little bit of something for every occasion.”

Cordie says Cinnamon Lifestyle eased into brick and mortar by first hosting a number of successful pop-up shops in the St. Cloud area.

“Those actually went really well,” Cordie said. “So, we wanted to have our own store to sell our clothes and other items so we’d have a space of our own to continue that creativity.”

“Pop-up shops are great – you get to network and meet new people,” Dahlgren added. “But, you’re limited on time, and we didn’t get to show all our styles – just the most popular ones – and that might not suit every woman that walks in.”

The women say they weren’t completely keen on their future retail space, the former site of a Subway sandwich store, when they first looked at it.

“We kind of put (the space) on the back burner,” Cordie laughed. “We had to do so much work, because it had green and yellow everywhere – the floors, the tiles, it was all Subway colors. So, we had to do so much.”

The shop’s remodel and redecorating effort was a large-scale, do-it-yourself effort by Dahlgren and Cordie, along with helpful family members and friends.

“We never doubted ourselves,” Dahlgren said. “We made this decision and kept moving forward. And I honestly think that got our customers engaged. Like, ‘wow! They’re opening in the middle of a pandemic? That’s so great - we have to go and support them!’ I feel like we took a huge leap and felt the support of our Cinnamon Girl Gang the whole way.”

As for the name of the shop, the women say it sprung from a series of conversations on long walks.

“(Cinnamon Lifestyle) just stemmed from a lot of different things,” Dahlgren added. “Cinnamon is an indescribable spice – it’s spicy, it’s sweet, everybody loves it. When you smell it in the air, you feel cozy. And (Cordie) and I are indescribable women. Our style – you can’t put it into a box. It’s really just about being the sweet and spicy girl you are, inside and out.”

Cinnamon Lifestyle is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. To learn more, follow them on Facebook or Instagram.