Swank | By Design

Sisters Alexis and Erika Perez run Swank By Design out of a storefront at 2 Broad Street in the small Madison County village of Hamilton, home to Colgate University, and the shop reads less like a single-category boutique and more like a full lifestyle stop built around curated vintage and modern finds. The description the owners use for their own space, a meticulously curated collection of vintage and modern goods offered in a brick and mortar setting, captures the mix well: shoppers can find home furnishings and rugs alongside handcrafted pillows and pottery, cutting boards, and custom furniture pieces, then turn a corner into racks of womens clothing, jewelry, and personal care items, or step outside the main categories entirely into garden goods meant for porches and patios rather than living rooms. That range makes Swank By Design useful for very different kinds of visits, whether someone is furnishing a first apartment near campus, hunting a specific decor accent for an established home, or simply looking for a thoughtful gift that feels more personal than a chain-store purchase. What sets the shop apart from a typical resale or vintage storefront is the design services layered on top of the retail floor: the Perez sisters offer full-service interior design work, including home renovations, new-build consultations, and personalized styling sessions, so a customer who falls for a specific rug or furniture piece in the shop can, in theory, walk out with a working relationship for a larger room or whole-home project rather than just a single purchase. The business has also built out a photography arm under the name Studio SBD Mini Sessions, extending its creative reach beyond retail and design into portrait and lifestyle photography, a combination that is unusual for a shop this size in a village the scale of Hamilton. Swank By Design keeps a tighter retail schedule than a big-box store, open Thursday and Friday from 10 in the morning to 5 in the evening and Saturday from 10 until 3, hours that suit a college-town customer base built around weekend visits, parents weekends, and Colgate-related events as much as everyday local shopping. Despite its small-town Hamilton address, the business describes work completed well beyond Central New York, with projects reaching into Florida as well as Connecticut, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, evidence that the design side of the operation has built a reputation that travels further than the shops physical footprint might suggest. For shoppers, that broader design reputation tends to show up on the retail floor as a more deliberate, styled sense of merchandising than a typical antique mall or consignment shop offers, since each vintage or modern piece is chosen by the same eye responsible for full home projects rather than simply accepted on consignment from whoever walks in the door. The shop leans into that philosophy explicitly, describing its goal as curating a lifestyle experience that exceeds what customers expect from a small-town shop. Anyone passing through Hamilton for a Colgate event, a Central New York weekend drive, or simply local errands will find Swank By Design worth a stop for its blend of home goods, personal accessories, and garden items alone, while homeowners with a bigger project in mind can use the same visit to start a conversation about design work. In short, Swank By Design is a Hamilton, New York boutique and interior design studio where curated vintage and modern home goods, clothing, and gifts share space with full design services from the same owners.