Fashion: Boyds Meets Girl
The ups and downs continued. The biggest bugaboo for Hammon with his fall 2005 buys remained couture must-have Oscar de la Renta. While de la Renta’s peeps let Neiman Marcus in King of Prussia bring two special customers on top of its fleet of buyers to the designer’s fashion show, they wouldn’t even give Boyds a firm appointment at the showroom. On the other hand, a visit to the chic Milanese import Etro — a line so important to Hammon that he jokes he made bringing it on board a condition of taking the job in Philadelphia — went swimmingly. And one step into Etro’s midtown showroom — all swirls, stripes, checks and weaves of eggplant, pumpkin, forest and mustard — and Hammon’s devotion was easily understood. Here was a designer whose richly patterned and deeply hued pieces could straddle the needs of Boyds’ existing middle-aged customers (who want, for the most part, coordinated outfits) and those of younger/hipper shoppers following the current mandate to mix and match designers with abandon. No, management couldn’t give a store so small a national exclusive on Hammon’s favorite ensemble, as he half-joked he wanted, but it did promise that Boyds will be the only store in Center City selling Etro. Touchdown.
Let girls be girls.
Truth be told, Boyds already has a cadre of devoted female clients for whom the current sales approach works just fine. They are people like Virginia Pepe, who comes with her husband every other week, as she says, “whether I need to or not.” Slipping off her Stuart Weitzman pumps one recent afternoon, she joked that Romanita, her regular sales associate, might make her color-coordinated tags, like Garanimals, so she can remember what goes with what once she gets her biweekly haul home. Another regular, 30-something consulting executive Angela Bakker Lee, needs suits — a lot of really nice suits. For her, the ability to work with one devoted saleswoman who understands her need to purchase high-end designer threads in “10-to-15-minute” intervals (the day we met her, she was in and out like a thin blond cyclone) makes Boyds the only place she shops. More designers, she says, will be the key to its success. And she does have a wish list: Dior and Chanel suits, and, as she tells Kent when he comes by to say hello to her, Cosabella lingerie.
What amounts to personal shopping is nice if you’re wealthy or time-starved, but any women’s store that wants buzz, and a broader audience, must also cater to she who browses. She who browses a lot. Gushner promises Boyds will, starting with an attitude adjustment this spring: “When you walk into the space, it will be more open, and people won’t be approached and asked to commit to what they’re looking for right away.” It’s part of his goal, as he says, to “make women feel like they’re in their own environment.”
