Our Story

Not Shopping. Tastemaking.

The idea

In Paris there is a shop on nearly every corner where the owner looks up when you walk in. She knows what you bought in December. She has already set something aside. Nobody calls it service. It is simply how a neighborhood works.

We came home wanting that. Not the pastries, not the light, though we miss both. The shop. The habit of giving something because you were paying attention.

MA VIE is a shop in the West Village built on that habit. We look for objects with a point of view. A glass with the right weight in the hand. A candle that changes a room before anyone sits down. A book worth leaving out. Some are made by people we know. Some we found once and never stopped thinking about. Each one is here for a reason, and we are happy to tell you what it is.

Who we are

MA VIE is Justin Mills and Alston Yang. After our time in Paris we wanted one thing back: the shop on the corner where the owner remembers your name, remembers what you gave last year and has something waiting. New York had those once. Hudson Street has one again.

We buy the way we would for our own house. Slowly, in person, and only when something is right. Then we wrap it the way we would want it handed to us.

The salon

We were not looking for a space. We walked past 555 Hudson on an ordinary afternoon, looked in through the glass and that was that. Some rooms choose you.

Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities upstairs. Her argument was that a street needs shops where the owner knows your name. We read it as instructions.

So this is a salon more than a store. There is a chair. Sit in it. Tell us who the gift is for and what they are like, and we will pull things from the shelves until one of them is obviously right. We will remember you next time. That is the whole point of a shop on a corner.