Boutiques and independent clothing
Clothing is the largest single category in Old Town and the reason most people come to shop here. Bishop Boutique sits at 815B King Street with shoes, clothing and accessories; The Shoe Hive and The Hive are together on Cameron Street with wearable clothing, shoes and accessories; and 3 Sisters, at 213 King, offers a more affordable fashion mix. Frances Valentine — the label co-founded by Elyce Arons and Kate Spade — opened an Old Town store in 2023. Bellacara handles beauty, skincare and haircare. National retailers are woven into the same blocks rather than separated into a mall: Anthropologie at 610 King, Bluemercury at 600 King, Simon Pearce at 721 King, Warby Parker at 805 King and lululemon.
Consignment and pre-owned designer
Old Town has an unusually deep secondhand scene for a district this size, and the useful thing to know is that most of it is not on King Street. Current Boutique is the exception at 1009 King, selling authenticated pre-loved designer pieces since 2009. The rest sit a block or two off: Mint Condition, a family-run shop at 122A S. Royal Street that bills itself as the DC metro's best consignment store, a title it credits to Northern Virginia Magazine among others; Encore Consignment Boutique at 119 S. Fairfax; VIDA Style Shop at 210 N. Lee, which handles high-end designer consignment for both men and women; and The Twig Thrift Shop at 106 N. Columbus, whose proceeds support Inova Alexandria Hospital — it keeps short hours (Wednesday through Saturday) and closes for part of the summer, so check before you go. If secondhand is your reason for the trip, plan a loop through the side streets rather than a straight walk down King.
Antiques, vintage and estate jewelry
Southern Living named Alexandria the best place for antiquing in Virginia in 2024, and the dealers here are spread across the district rather than clustered in one arcade. The Antique Guild, at 113 N. Fairfax Street, has dealt in antique, vintage and estate jewelry and sterling silver flatware and hollowware since 1980. A Galerie on Cameron Street carries one of the district's broadest ranges, with pieces spanning several centuries. Van Bommel Antiek Haus sits on the 1000 block of King. Silverman Galleries, at 110 N. Saint Asaph Street, has been in the family since 1958 and calls itself one of the Washington area's longest-running antique shops still under original family ownership; it deals in antique and estate jewelry, period art and antique silver. Spurgeon-Lewis Antiques has traded Continental, English and American 18th- and 19th-century pieces since 1991, and Henry Street Antiques at 115 S. Henry Street and Christopher H. Jones Antiques, an American 18th- and 19th-century specialist on N. Washington Street that opens by chance or appointment, round out the group. One practical warning: several of these dealers keep limited days and are closed early in the week, so confirm before you make a special trip for one shop.
Home, gifts and Alexandria-made goods
Red Barn Mercantile at 1117 King Street stocks home goods and gifts alongside furniture and kitchen essentials, and Boxwood carries a curated lifestyle range. Made in ALX, at 415 King Street, is the one to know if you want something actually from here — a marketplace selling art and handmade goods from about 50 Alexandria artists, which solves the gift problem better than a generic souvenir. The Old Town Shop at 104 S. Union Street, at the waterfront corner of King, handles souvenirs and Alexandria and Virginia goods.
Books, toys, yarn and other specialists
A handful of Old Town shops function as much as community spaces as stores, and they are the ones most likely to have something happening when you walk in. Old Town Books is a general-interest independent bookshop running book clubs, author events, writers' groups and workshops, with Old Town Books Junior handling children's books and gifts. Pippin Toy Co. stocks books, toys, puzzles, dolls and art supplies. fibre space, at 1319 Prince Street one block off King, is a full-service knit and crochet shop known well beyond Alexandria for its yarn tastings, classes and evening events. If you want the shopping trip to be an activity rather than an errand, check what these three have scheduled before you pick a date.
Getting here, parking and when to go
The free King Street Trolley runs between the King St–Old Town Metro station and City Hall / Market Square every fifteen minutes, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week including holidays, with stops roughly every two blocks — which makes it practical to park or arrive at one end and shop the whole mile without walking back. Note that the N. Fairfax and King stop has already been moved for the City Hall and Market Square renovation — it currently sits around the corner at 302 King Street — and it will shift again as the multi-year project continues; DASH posts current stop locations. For driving and parking specifics — which garages, the metered blocks, and how the residential permit rules work — see our parking guide and our visit page rather than circling King Street hoping for a space, and remember that the Unit, 100 and 200 blocks are car-free, so plan to park a few blocks up. Shop hours vary and shift seasonally; Sunday hours are common on King Street but shorter than weekdays.
Shopping events worth timing a visit around
Two annual events reliably change what a shopping trip here is worth. The Old Town Boutique Community runs the Alexandria Summer Sidewalk Sale each August — the seventeenth edition ran August 14 to 16, 2026, with deep discounts at more than thirty retailers. Separately, a group of Old Town boutiques cover the sales tax themselves over Virginia's early-August tax-free weekend; seventeen shops participated in 2026. Visit Alexandria bills the city as the Shop Small headquarters of the DC region, and the holiday stretch from late November onward is when the district leans hardest into that. Dates move year to year, so check our events page before building a trip around one of them.
