Unique Boutique

Indie designers in the chain-stored Back Bay

idden among the quiet antique stores on Charles Street, Boutique Eskil creeps up on you. It’s half a story above the street with display windows you have to look up to see. And while the merchandise is pricey, there’s a great selection of shoes and dresses from independent designers including Amanda Maciel Antunes, Liquid, and Masako for shoppers who love to spend their disposable income getting dressed up. Eskil also carries a lot of Asian designers, such as Yoshiyuki Konishi, so the merchandise doesn’t look like that of every other store around here. Horton

Shhhh! Brazilian-born, Boston-based, and musically trained, Amanda Maciel Antunes designs for the band Gretel and singer Katie Chastain.

Shhh who knew

So unfashionable was dowdy Brahmin Boston once considered that the poet Anne Sexton parodied it in her description in the poem "Speaking Bitterness" of "an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat."