It’s a haven where random labels hang together beautifully and customers are as happy to hang-out as to shop.

Urban Outfitters is about mish-mashing fashion forward labels with vintage finds in a thrown-together effortless look.

Urban Outfiitters instantly became one of the hippest of department stores in the city when it opened in 2001.

Where else would High School Musical starlet Vanessa Hudgens, boho queen Mischa Barton and fledgling trendsetter Rachel Bilson procure their layered, distressed, day-time essentials?

Bridging the gap between mass-produced high street lines and designer labels, the spring/summer look is a lesson in casual chic, including jumpsuits, ruffled body-con dresses, mis-matching prints and some of the most versatile denim this side of the Atlantic.

Maybe the coollest thing to come out of Philadelphia since cream cheese, the store conceived by Richard Hayne opened in 1970 as Free People, a stone’s thrown from the University of Pennsylvania.

The Glasgow branch, at the former Stock Exchange building just off Nelson Mandela Place, was the third European store to open after London and Dublin, and is home to menswear and women’s clothing, music, books, gifts and homewares.

It’s undergoing a makeover, with the final result set to be revealed with a “lock-in” on April 2 with 20% off for students.

• Urban Outfitters is at 157 Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Telephone: 0141 248 9203. www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk