4. Flocking to vintage in Palm Springs

In a throwback town, indulging in shopping as time travel.

Macramé owls line the lobby at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs.

Two dozen owls stared over the lobby of Palm Springs’ Parker Hotel, all beady eyes and scraggly tails. But the guests slouching on the louche caramel-colored leather sofa below seem unfazed—the flock was made of macramé rope, just one of a zillion vintage touches that groovy interior designer Jonathan Adler used to transform this 1959 Holiday Inn. Think hulking tin statues of knights guarding doorways and a mammoth neon “drugs” sign on the wall.

Those kitschy birds gave me a jolt of panic, though. Was one of them Twiggy, the handcrafted jute wall hanging I’d won in a 1970s Bingo game? She had hung on the wall of my childhood bedroom next to a swoony poster of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, a prized possession until I deemed her hideously out of date in the late 80s. By the time I left for college, Twiggy had migrated to a charity shop or yard sale.

But the ghost of my bad owl art haunted me in Palm Springs, where my husband C and I had flown for a long weekend. We came to enjoy the California desert city’s low-slung midcentury modern houses, San Jacinto Mountains vistas, and legendary vintage shops. I had signed up for 1950s and 1960s glam, not a macramé-fueled nostalgia trip to the disco era.

“People travel to see what they can’t experience where they live, whether that’s the canals of Venice or architecture from a past era,” says LA-based mid-century modern expert Charles Phoenix, who leads tours of PS during its biannual Modernism Week. And in some places and cases, that travel can blast you back to a time you never experienced: the Art Deco period in Miami’s South Beach, the mid 20th century heyday of Palm Springs, when women in taffeta cocktail dresses rustled through Jetson-esque nightclubs.

“I describe the Palm Springs look as Lilly Pulitzer meets Mad Max, with all the bright colors that dazzle in this desert light,” says resident Andrew Nelson.

After retro Crab Louie and thoroughly modern avocado toast under the orange and yellow awnings at the Parker’s Norma restaurant, my husband and I took our rental car on a self-driving architectural tour suggested by Visit Palm Springs. (Next time, maybe we’ll splash out on an antique car with a driver or book a guided tour.)

We tooled around the city’s canyons and wide boulevards, stopping to photograph and ogle all the “Desert Modernism”: Richard Neutra’s blocky glass-and-steel 1946 Kaufmann House, “Swiss Miss” ranch homes with dramatic central A-frame entrances, and the Palm Springs Visitors Center. The last occupies a 1965 gas station with a dramatic triangular awning, a slice of white cutting the blue sky.

Jazzed by all those right angles and exuberance, I was ready to shop for some stylish MCM clothing and decor. C dropped me off at the top of North Palm Canyon Drive in the Uptown Design District, where small mom-and-pop (or pop-and-pop) boutiques tumble down the street. In a gallery-like white space, A la Mod had brass, Chinese-inspired lounge chairs, 1960s Lucite tables, and a Cubist enamel painting in blues and whites I nearly snapped up.

A room vignette at A La Mod on Palm Canyon Drive.

At most Palm Canyon Drive vintage dens, the shopkeepers were uncommonly friendly and the prices reasonable compared to the spendy East Coast. I liked Bustown Modern’s mash up of designer consignment and vintage, including a voile, 1960s swing dress in a yellow and lavender floral ($60) that I bought. Packed-to-the-ceilings Gypsyland burst with lime green and white 1950s men’s golf shoes and 1960s Hawaiian maxi dresses that seemed zapped in from a groovy country club. (I scored a Chinese-style blue tunic with gold brocade trim for me and a paisley shirt for C.)

A 1960s dress from Bustown Modern goes to the Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs.

As I walked closer to downtown along Palm Canyon, other boutiques leaned vintage in mood, if not merch. Trina Turk and Mr. Turk are hers-and-his clothing stores serving up tropical hued, pool-to-party wear. (I could see one-time Palm Springer Cary Grant in Mr. Turk’s leopard-print “Thurston” blazer.)

Frank Clothiers filled its wallpapered menswear nook with bright, patterned styles like a Les Deux green and white trellis print shirt and punchy-hued Italian knits. And the Frippery carried both vintage womenswear (a silky 1980s secretary dress, a butterfly print maxi skirt) plus brilliant new kaftans (about $200) made from dead stock vintage fabric.

A blazer from Mr. Turk.

A kaftan made of new old stock material at the Frippery.

“I describe the Palm Springs look as Lilly Pulitzer meets Mad Max, with all the bright colors that dazzle in this desert light,” said my friend Andrew Nelson, a recent transplant who wrote the new travel book Here Not There. “There’s nothing subdued about how people dress here.”

Dozens of midcentury glass vases and goblets in shades from ruby to emerald to azure glinted in the big windows at Bon Vivant. Inside, owner Patrick Barry stocks more art glass, 1970s enameled metal dish ware, and Studio 54 worthy costume jewelry.

Bon Vivant is a jewelbox of vintage glass vessels made in the U.S. and Italy.

I was eyeballing a metal dish swirled with Picasso-esque yellow and blue squiggles when I saw them: another pair of macramé owls on a back wall. A 20something man in nerdy glasses paused in front of them, smiling. He bought the smaller of the two birds. “My boyfriend is going to love this, it feels so throwback,” he told the shopkeeper.

I hoped that owl allowed him to escape to some imagined, idealized version of the 1970s. I left the shop happy to have done some time travel, but without a scrap of macramé in my suitcase.

Other spots not to miss in Palm Springs:

We stayed at the La Serena Villas, a white-walled, 1936 motor court-turned-boutique hotel. It boasts private, outdoor clawfoot tubs, comfy beds, and a chic little Mexican restaurant Azucar with Frida Kahlo-inspired art and yummy guac.

There’s often a wait out to get into the Rooster & the Pig, a snug Vietnamese restaurant that serves crispy tumeric cod over rice noodles and crispy calamari in serrano-coconut sauce.

Please drink a sweet, icy date shake in Palm Springs—they’re whipped up all over town, and are a local delight.

Robolights is a wacky, folk-art display in Palm Springs resident Kenny Irwin, Jr.’s yard. Even though you can just peer over the fence, it’s a nutty, Transformers-gone-punk experience.

A folk artist filled his yard with Transformers-like beings to create Robolights.

You’ll see palm trees everywhere in Palm Springs (um, it’s in the name). But the pint-sized Moorten Botanical Garden overflows with cacti, succulents, and other desert dwellers, and it’s a great place to learn a little more about the landscape.

The Prescott Preserve is a former golf course that’s being rewilded and turned into a bird-filled public park.