Find Furniture Gems of Yesteryear at Today, Tomorrow

“Finding forgotten pieces, seeing the beauty in them and bringing them back to their former glory is something that really resonates with me,” says Nora Aguinaldo, owner of Today, Tomorrow, Honolulu’s newest furniture shop. Tucked above the former Indigo restaurant space on Nu‘uanu Avenue, the airy loft-style showroom is the perfect blank canvas for Aguinaldo’s gems culled from across the globe.

The shop’s eclectic array reflects Aguinaldo’s affinity for natural materials, sculptural silhouettes and a wide span of design periods. Its scaffolding-style plywood shelves are dotted with original Isamu Noguchi Akari table lamps. “Their paper quality is better than the reproductions,” Aguinaldo says. And Swiss industrial Bruno Rey dining chairs mingle with midcentury Mario Bellini floor lamps and a vintage cane-trimmed folding chair from India.

A sun-soaked corner of the shop offers a rack of vintage clothing, European rugs, tableware and décor pieces from modern labels, such as Hay and Areaware, plus Danish wood children’s toys selected with Aguinaldo’s 2-year-old son in mind.

Formerly a biological engineer, Aguinaldo’s love for design blossomed after a career pivot in 2019 led her to start a video production company with her husband. “It opened up the worlds of fashion, design, art and creativity,” she says. Armed with some natural handicraft skills—she grew up with a contractor father and a mother who weaved tapestries—Aguinaldo taught herself to refurbish furniture. It took her nine painstaking months to restore the shop’s chrome Knoll Bertoia lounger. Next, she’ll update a 1960s Hans Wagner-style chair with Danish paper cord.

The value of creating and collecting pieces with intention is a lesson she hopes that Today, Tomorrow will help impart. There’s something special about “seeing the work, love and manual labor that go into producing things that last forever,” Aguinaldo says.