Columbia mainstay retailer celebrates city icons with unique keepsake belt
The Adluh Flour mill. The Gervais Street bridge. Lake Murray Dam. The Capstone dormitory tower at USC. A Cockaboose.
And the cowboy in the bathtub, an enduring emblem of the beloved, bygone Yesterdays restaurant (may she rest in peace).
Perry Lancaster, himself nearly as much a Columbia icon as each of those landmarks, selected each of them as symbols to adorn a special new clothing item that celebrates the capital city.
Lancaster’s Devine Street menswear boutique, Brittons of Columbia, collaborated with a New England clothier to design an exclusive handmade, needlepoint belt for Columbia’s biggest fans.
“We call them ‘life belts,’ and the idea is just to kind of take the most interesting or most important parts of a town,” said Chris Piper, a representative of Smathers & Branson, the Maine-based company that produces the specialty belts. “It was one of the sliver linings of all the extra time people had on their hands during the beginning of the pandemic, where in March, April and May, our designers had a lot more bandwidth, so we were able to get creative with what we were putting together.”
“Perry loves the city of Columbia and had some great ideas,” Piper added.
Each belt is stitched by hand, requiring up to 25 hours of work, Piper said.
It’s been a hard year for small businesses like Brittons, which has been in business in Columbia since 1947. The belt is a sort of reminder to support what we love about the city we live in, Lancaster said.
“It’s a challenging time, but you know, I feel that this is the time — in 2021 — to support local, family-owned, local restaurants, local businesses ... just support local,” Lancaster said.
Brittons has sold around 50 of the Columbia icons belts since August, Lancaster said, with customers buying them as gifts and as personal treats. They sell for $175 and are available only at Brittons.
With each Columbia belt he sells, Lancaster proudly throws in a complementary bag of Adluh yellow grits — grown right here in South Carolina.
