Simply Casual

If anyone can claim to be a steward of the modern Avenue of Fashion, it’s Rufus Bartell. His boutique, Simply Casual, has dressed Detroit for the better part of two decades, and Bartell himself — listed among the city’s “Who’s Who” — has been one of the loudest, most effective champions of the corridor’s revival.

The shop trades in elevated, grown-folks fashion, the kind of pieces that nod to the Avenue’s furs-and-finery heyday while staying firmly current. Come for the clothes; stay for the sense that you’re standing in a place someone has fought to keep alive. Bartell likes to remind people this is one of the highest concentrations of Black-owned businesses on any street in America — and that it deserves to be talked about more.