LOCAL NOMAD
A conversation with Lauren Danuser
Written By Abigail Spong
Photo: Winona Grey
Whether you’ve known her for five years or five minutes, Lauren Danuser feels like your dream big sister. Effortless, kind, your fiercest advocate. She’s also the owner of Local Nomad, a true staple in the dwindling Phoenix retail scene. You might find her swaying around the shop and blending in with her employees, or occasionally online, selfie-modeling a sea of new clothing arrivals in her full-length mirror.
Lauren received her degree in fashion merchandising at Indiana University. “I convinced my parents to pay out-of-state tuition because they had a really good business school, ” she said. After weeding out the prerequisite courses and landing on her major, Lauren was recruited into Gap’s rotational training program just before her senior year. What followed was a leap to San Francisco to spend the next six years working at Gap headquarters and wandering Hayes Valley in search of her true self. “On theweekends I would wander for hours. It was how I discovered myself, ” she said. “I had this crazy, beautiful city life, but there were parts that felt lonely too, but popping into these little shops gave me this sense of belonging.”
Lauren cupped that feeling in her palms and came to terms with her finite time at Gap. “I just didn’t really want to move up the corporate ladder and I felt like I had learned what I wanted to learn, ” she said. “I had this pull to do something more creative and have more autonomy. ” She found a position on Craigslist to manage a small shop in Ghirardelli Square and described the owner as the ultimate cool-girl, picking up the ins and outs of entrepreneurship from her.
Lauren relocated to Phoenix in the summer of 2015, knowing no one but her then-partner, and dove headfirst into her cultivated dream of opening a shop. What followed was anything but a slow burn. She cold-emailed a leasing company directly and opened Local Nomad just four months after the move.
In a mere ten years, Lauren and her team have attracted a cult-like following of what they call “LoNo Loyalists” through a book club, a hiking club, secondhand clothing sales, diary-like Instagram posts, and a hyper-curated local’s guide to Phoenix. I joked that their lines out the door look like a hypebeast sneaker drop. Lauren laughed that they never wanted to be a cool-girl shop, but something grounded and sensorial, a place you can go to find a thoughtful gift or simply feel inspired. And it’s true. You feel it in every detail. The candle burning, the humming music, the ever-shifting art on the walls and color-coded merchandised tables. Local Nomad is here to stay, and Phoenix is better for it.
Localnomadshop.com | @localnomadshop
Photographed in her historic neighborhood abode in Phoenix with some of her favorite finds. Photography by Winona Grey.
