Style delivery: Partners Mandi Staggs (left) and Selena Viskovich are adding fashion to the truck market.
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Locally owned fashion boutique Haute Chix is expanding, and you can thank your favorite food truck. It may seem strange at first. After all, food and fashion are usually considered mortal enemies — popular opinion wrongly suggests that mastering the latter requires forgoing the former. Still, it was the success food trucks that raised the question in Haute Chix owner Selena Viskovich’s mind: “If they can do it, why can’t I?”
Thus, Las Vegas welcomes its first fashion truck. The mobile ministore is housed inside a bright turquoise truck, gutted to make room for clothing racks and a few shelves for accessories. Products come from Haute Chix’s two brick-and-mortar boutiques in Boca Park and Southern Highlands, and sister store Cityfied, a men’s and women’s urbanwear shop in the southwest valley. The truck has a makeshift dressing room — a generator provides continuous cool air.
Viskovich and truck business partner Mandi Staggs will use social networks such as Twitter the way the food trucks have, and the long-term plan is to attend First Fridays, farmers markets and events such as Vegas StrEATS — anything that promotes a sense of community, where people will appreciate the business’s commitment to local designers. The truck will also be available for private events such as birthday or bachelorette parties where women might like to shop at their own pace and preferred location. “There are a lot of possibilities for it, really,” Viskovich says, “but, if nothing else, it is great advertising for the stores.”
Still, the partners hope their truck does more than become a clunky, moving billboard. To them, the truck is an opportunity to shape the city, one stop and one visitor at a time. “We aren’t known for our style,” Viskovich says of Las Vegas. “Cities like New York or L.A. seem to have defined styles. Here, I think fashion is just starting to become important to people, and we are shaping our style. I am excited to be a part of that molding.”
A version of this story appears in the current edition of Las Vegas Weekly, a sister publication of the Sun.