It’s a bright Saturday morning in late fall, and I wake up to a call from my sister. Checking the clock and rubbing my eyes, confusion turns to panic as the clock reads 6:45 a.m. Something must have happened.
“Hello?” I stutter, trying to maintain composure.
“We have to go!” It’s pure excitement on her end.
“Excuse me?”
“We have to go! I’m sending you their profile. I’ll be over in 10 and we’ll stop by after the market.”
I unlock my phone and click the Instagram notification. A profile named “Club Duquette” populates. I immediately understood.
Within a few hours we were walking through the Woodlawn location appreciating the signature scent that enwraps you as you thumb through exclusive imported denim, sniff perfectly prepared candles from a favorite local candlemaker, and appreciate the beautifully curated array of natural skin and beauty products.
Club Duquette in Woodlawn is one of Birmingham’s most unique and fulfilling shopping experiences. With incredible attention to detail and even better conversation with employees, every product in the store tells a tale while maintaining a degree of aesthetic excellence nearly unmatched in the area. The experiential retail brand has been featured in Vogue, New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Nylon among other outlets and publications.
The shop is the second child of Duquette and Morgan Johnston, two of Birmingham’s coolest individuals. Duquette, a well-loved musician, has a fascinating musical background. He was raised in Birmingham and Wyoming and began his career in high school where he learned to play music and promoted punk rock acts. He went on to play bass in the late ‘90s Merge Records buzz band Verbena who toured with the Foo Fighters.
After he left the band, he went on to release four solo albums. His latest release titled Social Animals is available for streaming. He worked with acclaimed producer John Agnello to create the sound he was looking for, “John Agnello got what I was trying to do, and he took the sound to a completely outerwordly place.”
Morgan Jones Johnston, the other half of the iconic duo, is known as an artist, storyteller, entrepreneur, and self-proclaimed treasure hunter. She is not only an inspiring mother to son Tennessee but an inspiration to many with her incredible artistic eye that can be experienced across all of her work from painting and writing to design and curation.
Morgan draws from a rich life experience having spent years overseas living and working as an artist in places like England and France. Morgan and her work have been shared across outlets from Vogue to Southern Living. Regarding her most recent work, “Her current bodies of work are an exploration of the role of the artist as the mirror, how we see ourselves, and how we want to be remembered in legacy. These themes are explored through her experiential new media portraiture experience.”
Often found promoting good energy at their shop in Woodlawn, the duo also spends time traveling to various places around the country to share their insights around “the intersection of art & commerce and how to create sustainable small business models as working artists.”
