This year we are finally doing a family Christmas card. We’ve talked about it for a few years, and every year Christmas sneaks up on us and it doesn’t happen. This year I asked for help. Six of us, one afternoon of good light, and a wife who has already figured out what everybody else is wearing. The only person who hasn’t been handled is me. So last Friday I did what I should have done years ago. I drove to the Shops at Oak Lea, walked into the Pawleys Island Men’s Store, and said, “I need to look like I belong in this picture.”
I was out the door in under half an hour with the whole outfit. That’s the short version. The long version is the reason this is the first Local Favorite we’re putting on the site.
The store that’s been here since 1979
If you’ve lived on the Waccamaw Neck for any length of time, you’ve driven past it a thousand times. White porch, pond out front with the fountain running, right there on Highway 17 in the middle of Pawleys. What I didn’t know until Rob told me is how far back it goes.
The Pawleys Island Men’s Store has been dressing men around here since 1979. It started in the Hammock Shops, the village that’s anchored the Pawleys mainland since the 1930s, back when the Original Hammock Shop was still the main reason anybody pulled off the highway. From there it moved up the road to the Shops at Oak Lea, a small cluster of locally owned stores on the east side of 17: the Men’s Store, its sister shop for women (Pawleys Pedalar, shoes and resort wear), a Lilly Pulitzer shop, a jeweler, an art gallery. No chains, no parking deck, a pond with a fountain instead of a sign tower.
Think about that for a second. A men’s clothing store, in a beach town, outlasting four and a half decades of hurricanes, recessions, and the arrival of online shopping. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because the people inside know their customers by name and know what a Pawleys closet needs.
Walk in and look up
The first thing you notice when you walk in is a ship’s wheel hanging over the checkout counter. It sets the tone. This is a coastal store, not a mall store. The second thing you notice, if you’ve been here before, is that everything feels new.
That’s because it is. A couple of weeks ago the store finished a remodel and settled into the space right next door, the side the women’s shop used to hold, and the two traded places. Same porch, different door. Inside, new hardwood floors run the length of the showroom. There’s a round display table in the middle, new built-in shelving along the walls, and a lounge area where you can sit while somebody pulls options for you. The belts, the shirts, the shoes all have room to breathe. If you haven’t been in since September, it’s worth a stop just to see it.
What they carry
Rob put it better than I can. The store carries “everything from a night on the town to a day on the golf course.” That’s the whole philosophy. Casual resort wear for men, done well.
The brands on the racks tell you the standard: Peter Millar, Johnnie-O, Martin Dingman, and an entire wall of Smathers & Branson needlepoint belts and koozies. If you’ve never owned a Smathers & Branson belt, this is the place to fix that. There’s a Johnnie-O sunglasses display by the front, a wall of folded shirts and sweaters down the hardwood aisle, and a rack of sport coats and shoes toward the back that’s where my Friday really started.
Meet Rob
Rob is the man at the belt wall, and he has been the face of this store for a long time. He will tell you where the store started, which brands he stands behind, and what you should actually wear, in about the same number of words I just used. He didn’t try to sell me a suit. He didn’t try to sell me three sport coats. He pulled the right one, held the fabric up to the shirt, and said “that’s it.”
The Christmas card outfit
Here’s what Rob pulled for me, and why it works for a coastal family photo:
- A navy windowpane sport coat. Navy photographs well against sand, marsh grass, and a gray December sky, and the windowpane gives it texture without competing with whatever the kids are wearing.
- A cream dress shirt underneath. Softer than white, which can blow out in the sun.
- Khaki and stone dress pants. We looked at both, and the stone pair won for the beach setting.
The whole thing took maybe ten minutes once Rob understood what we were doing. I’ve been in stores where you leave feeling like you were worked. This was the opposite. I left feeling like I’d been helped, with the kraft bag with the palmetto on it and the family’s one unsolved problem solved.
Why a real estate team is writing about a clothing store
Fair question. The Steel Group sells homes in Pawleys Island, Litchfield, Murrells Inlet, and Georgetown. We don’t sell sport coats.
But I’ve been doing this for twenty years, and the thing people ask me after they buy a house here isn’t about the house. It’s “where do I go for this?” Where do I get a good haircut, where do I take the boat, where do I buy a decent pair of pants without driving to Myrtle Beach. The answers to those questions are what make Pawleys feel like home instead of just an address.
So we’re going to start writing them down. Local Favorites is a running series of places we actually use, written by me, with my own photos, with no sponsorships. The Men’s Store is first because it was the one I needed last week.
If you’re thinking about moving here, this is part of the pitch. If you already live here, you probably have your own list, and I’d like to hear it.
If you go
Pawleys Island Men’s Store, the Shops at Oak Lea, 11096 Ocean Highway, Pawleys Island, SC 29585. East side of Highway 17, pond and fountain out front. Get directions · (843) 237-2012 · check the Google listing for hours. Go before the holidays if you need a Christmas card outfit of your own. Tell them Justin sent you, and then go see the new floors.
Looking at Pawleys Island as more than a vacation? Here’s our guide to Pawleys Island neighborhoods, and if you already own here and want to know what your home is worth in today’s market, start with a free home valuation. Or just reach out and we’ll talk.