Funky Monkey moves to new Magazine Street location | Entertainment/Life

Funky Monkey owner Jen Mayfield spent years in a quiet battle with the wall that divided her Magazine Street clothing store in two.

She watched men run for the hills when they opened the front door to find pink wigs and sequined dresses, never realizing a men’s section overflowing with T-shirts and ball caps sat just on the other side of the divided sales floor. Customers of all creeds often turned to leave at the sight of shoppers crowded inside the Uptown store on busy afternoons, the wall taking up precious square footage even in the times of greatest need.

“They felt like they couldn’t squeeze in,” Mayfield, 45, said, “or didn’t feel comfortable in small spaces.”

Space wasn’t an issue in the early days, according to Mayfield. Once upon a time, Funky Monkey was so small and new that it occupied a single side of the building at 3125 Magazine.

But in its nearly 30 years on the popular pedestrian promenade, the hybrid costume, vintage and modern clothing shop has become a New Orleans institution, one of the few stores to open and sell costumes for the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina and a place where everybody from teenagers to 80-year-olds come to find something special.

The surrounding neighborhood has changed too, with Magazine Street’s increasingly national commercialization attracting more and more foot traffic and raising the stakes for mom and pop shops.

The dividing wall at Funky Monkey, meanwhile, became a barrier that often made the 4,000-square-foot space feel half its size and twice as packed.

So in March, after three decades in the same yellow and burgundy building, Funky Monkey moved to a new location across the street at 3102 Magazine. It’s on the same street, on the same block, and, surprisingly, has the same amount of square footage. There are high ceilings and big front windows that send natural light beaming into the store.

And, more importantly, there’s no divider wall in sight.

“I do think this space will just give us better flow,” Mayfield said, going on to joke that, “we’ll be able to get the guys in a little bit easier.”

Now, customers can more freely move between the racks of men’s and women’s clothing, which cohabitate in the new space, and there’s more room behind the cash register, too.

Mayfield said she hopes the new location will be easier for both her employees and customers to navigate.

The fitting rooms — set back behind a series of curtains and doors in the old store — are visible from all corners of the new location, making it easier for employees to filter customers in and out. There’s more peripheral space for lines at the cash register, a point of contention at the old location, where Mayfield said customers were forced to block clothing racks while waiting to check out.

There were more serious structural issues with the building, too, which made it out of Katrina largely unscathed but wasn’t so lucky when Hurricane Ida hit in 2021.

Mayfield started working at Funky Monkey when she returned to New Orleans to rebuild after Katrina and later took over the business with her husband, 51-year-old Michael Mayfield. The building has been through a lot over the years, but Ida was the worst.

The roof caved in, and though it was promptly patched, Mayfield said it still has not been fully repaired. Insurance company inspections became more common after Ida, and Mayfield said the aging building and deferred maintenance made it a challenge to get contents insurance, a must-have for businesses operating in the evolving Magazine Street landscape.

“So it did change,” Mayfield said. “We found ourselves in this new situation with the growth of Magazine Street. And so we sort of have to adapt to this new commercialization.”

A series of building collapses in late 2024 got her thinking more seriously about a move. When the store across the street — once home to Frock Candy boutique and, most recently, an escape room — opened up, she jumped at the chance to start a new chapter.

Mayfield was sad to leave the building where Funky Monkey found so much success. She said she would have loved to buy the place, which is now up for sale, if she didn’t think it would be a long-term disruption to business.

Funky Monkey is fully operational in its new location now, but Mayfield said she’s taking her time with the décor and setup. Designing the store’s atmosphere is an opportunity she hasn’t had in a long time, and she doesn’t want to rush the process.

In the meantime, she said, she’ll let the clothes speak for themselves.