Urban Outfitters

Urban Outfitters was founded in 1970 in Philadelphia by Richard Hayne, Judy Wicks, and Scott Belair as a store adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania campus designed to appeal to the urban college student demographic. The original Free People store became Urban Outfitters in 1976, and the brand’s expansion over the following decades produced a retail concept that has remained consistent in its target demographic across fifty years of changing fashion cycles: the young adult who wants clothing and objects that carry a specific aesthetic sensibility, somewhere between bohemian and streetwear, with vintage influences and an interest in music and counterculture.

The Georgetown store at 3111 M Street NW is on the middle portion of the M Street commercial block, in a position that captures both the Georgetown University student traffic and the M Street visitor foot traffic. The store format at Urban Outfitters is larger than most of the boutiques in the Georgetown market, allowing the full range of product categories the brand carries to be displayed with the layered, maximalist aesthetic that Urban Outfitters stores are known for.

The clothing range covers women’s and men’s in the fashion-forward casual category, with vintage and vintage-influenced pieces alongside the brand’s own label. The vintage section, which features secondhand pieces sourced and styled in the Urban Outfitters aesthetic, is among the distinctive offerings that the store carries that other retailers on M Street do not. The home goods section, which has grown into a significant part of the Urban Outfitters business model, carries the decorative objects, bedding, candles, and lifestyle products that the brand sells to the college-adjacent apartment decorator.

The record section, stocking vinyl across new releases and used classics, and the book selection, which covers design, style, and culture titles alongside the fiction and graphic novels that the brand’s customer reads, extend the store beyond pure clothing retail into a lifestyle destination.

Hours run from 10am Monday through Saturday and 11am Sunday, with Friday and Saturday extending to 9pm. The Urban Outfitters sale section, which occupies a significant portion of the Georgetown floor space, carries prior-season merchandise at significant markdowns alongside the current season at full price. For the Georgetown University student or the budget-conscious shopper who wants the Urban Outfitters aesthetic without the full-price investment, the sale section is where the value is found. The beauty section at the Georgetown store carries the brand-name skincare and cosmetics alongside the Urban Outfitters own-label beauty products. The brand’s in-house Anthropologie and Free People sister companies are not in the same store, but the aesthetic they share with Urban Outfitters gives the Georgetown shopper a comparable sensibility. The M Street store at 3111 is open from 10am Monday through Saturday and 11am Sunday.