With its quiet, tree covered street, and sidewalks only sparsely scattered with pedestrians, it’s easy to forget you’re in New York when you take the G train to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Walking into the Dossier Shop only reinforces this feeling, giving the sense of entering another country, or even another decade.

Founded by three high school friends and Brooklyn natives Katherine Krause, Molly McIver and Skye Parrott, the Dossier Shop is the brick and mortar extension of Dossier Magazine, a biannual collection of writing, art, photography and fashion with no theme tying it all together. “So many people told us not to do a magazine,” Krause, the publication’s editor-in-chief and the shop’s co-owner told us from behind the store’s glass check out counter. “Then so many people told us not to do a store.”

Thankfully, Krause and her two longtime friends do not follow anyone’s instincts but their own. The Dossier brand supplies a necessary nostalgic jolt for anyone lucky enough to come across it—in print, on the web or in its latest architectural representation. The magazine is now in its third issue, and features a lovely poem by the great Sherman Alexie, eye-opening interviews with MSNBC news anchor Rachel Maddow and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon (interviewed by Richard Kern, no less) as well as page after page of experimental, carefully constructed photography. The only common thread is a consistent brilliance weaving through each piece. The shop is at least as chaotic, and certainly as charming.

Each of the three owners has a niche, and each brings a separate voice to the shop’s look and feel: Krause is the writer and vintage collector, McIver is the artist and Parrott is the photographer and contemporary design hunter. Dossier’s only theme is passion and love. “We all pick up things we love and put them here,” McIver explains, referring to the shop. As if on cue, she stops to sell someone a copy of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. She stares at the book admiringly as she writes a receipt, smiles, and says to herself as much as to her customer, “This is a good book.”

The store is small, but it rewards attentive browsing. Beautiful old copies of On the Road and Madame Bovary rest alongside contemporary art and literature journals on the bookshelves, while vintage clothing intermingles seamlessly with new designs from Frank Tell, In God We Trust, Electric Feathers, and many others. “I love when someone takes the time to find something that works for them,” Krause says, referring to the store’s vast and varied selection.

Dossier is that rare magazine that feels timeless—nostalgic, but not tacky, classic, but forward looking. The shop is the perfect complement, a rare mom and pop store that isn’t several decades old. A shop that’s as filled with character as the women who run it.

Shop address: Dossier Shop 244 DeKalb Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205

—Michael Miller