Aux Belles Chose

Aux Belle Chose is a small shop on Magazine Street that specializes in antique silver and vintage items. It carries French provincial fabric items, mostly for kitchens. It also has a cute collection of reasonably priced items like Christmas ornaments, tea towels, soaps, and candles. Honestly, it’s a little hard to categorize this shop. It has cute, slightly random, things to put in your home.

I often use this shop for gifts for the ladies in my life. It has New Orleans and Mardi Gras themed items which make good and reasonably priced gifts. Last Christmas I was doing some last-minute shopping on Magazine and went into a different shop where I purchased a couple of New Orleans themed tea towels. Imagine my surprise when I went into Aux Belle Chose later that day and found the same tea towels for several dollars less (I should have returned the overpriced ones to the previous shop but my social battery was almost dead so I decided I didn’t have the energy for that interaction).

I really enjoy this shop (obviously, since I keep returning to it). However if you are someone sensitive to visual overwhelm - be warned that this isn’t the kind of shop where only a couple of items are displayed on a surface. This store is trying to give you options and lots of them. It has unique and fun items packed onto each available surface in the shop. I find it charming but it also means I take a long time to browse because there are so many items for me to process. Sometimes I walk through each room multiple times before I feel like I’ve been able to register everything. Luckily the employees are not pushy and don’t seem to mind that I make 3 rounds around the store before heading to the register. Give yourself plenty of time to wander in this one!