Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/78062
ith the announcement of Chanel's latest investment in Boston—a two-story, 10,000- square-foot flagship boutique designed by architect Peter Marino—a buzz could be felt all along Newbury Street, reverberating through the Back Bay. Some see it as a sign that high fashion is back. But perhaps what's back is Boston itself, as a welcoming, profitable place for fashion designers, and especially international brands that seek to invest outside an economically troubled Europe. Chanel's investment in Boston shows interest from the retail side, and Bostonians' interest in fashion is evidenced by the continuing evolution and expansion of Boston Fashion Week, where front-row patron seat packages for three days of shows have been made available for those who want to support local talents. Back Bay shoppers tend to be big spenders. Case in point, in 2011, Italian brand Loro Piana's Newbury Street store was ranked the third most expensive fashion boutique in the United States, with each customer spending an Street: British labels Ted Baker, AllSaints Spitalfields, and Ben Sherman have opened in recent years to much acclaim, and Fred Perry took up residency in a brownstone this past summer. "We chose Boston as our first US retail location... outside of New York because we found great synergy here and felt we could align our brand's rich heritage with that of the city," says Richard Martin, Fred Perry's head of global marketing. That rich heritage gives the city a familiar European character rare in the US that appeals to foreign fashion executives, and it is home to a student population with buying power, as well as a clientele who deeply appreciates the value of quality and detail top designers offer over disposable trends. And, within Boston, Newbury Street offers something that few malls can compete with: A vibrant experience that includes outdoor cafés, interesting people-watching, and top-notch spas, salons, and art galleries. As such, it has become a barometer for the times—measuring not just what we spend our money on, but how we spend it, too. SHOPPING DISTRICT N A MAN-MADE LUXURY ewbury Street was a place of transformation from the very beginning. For starters, it's not even natural land: Over a period of 25 years beginning in 1857, the city created the section of town now known as the Back Bay by filling in part of Boston Harbor. Initially, the street was primarily residential, but Boston's original Ritz-Carlton hotel (overlooking the Public Garden) opened on May 19, 1927, joining a few furriers and bespoke designers on the block, and officially marked Newbury as the upscale commercial district. Puritan heritage impacted the local style—a tough-to-shake ethos that once prompted designer Bill Blass to proclaim that Boston girls had "other, higher things" on their minds than fashion. Post World War II prosperity saw the rise of the retail giants—Boston's Jordan Marsh pioneered the department store concept back in the mid 1800s, forever changing how we shopped. Multiple mom-and-pop stores gave way to the all-under-one-roof department store. With the growing popularity of these stores nationally and locally in the 1940s, it's no surprise that the first designer fashion outpost to land on Newbury Street was upscale department store Bonwit Teller. The Manhattan-based store, renowned for its modern sensibility and promoting a young Christian Dior, opened at the corner of Berkeley and Newbury (later the longtime site of Louis) in 1947. Beacon Hill resident and former Newbury Street boutique owner Marilyn Riseman, now 85, was 20 years old when Bonwit Teller opened. "They came in with this shoe department like you never saw before," she recalls. "You were getting things no one else had. For the first time, if you wanted to live in Boston and not run to New York to shop, you could." Small retail shops had anchored the block on Newbury Street between Arlington and Berkeley for the first half of the 20th century, but Bonwit's made one-stop couture shopping possible. houses aren't the only internationals with long-term interest in Newbury LOCAL DESIGNERS PICK UP average of $2,818 during every visit. But the French and Italian fashion THEIR SHEARS W ith two retail giants—Filene's and Jordan Marsh—headquartered in Boston, local designers had direct access to in-market buyers (New York- based Bonwit Teller had its buyers in that city). One such designer was Shirley Willett, who was instrumental in helping to establish Boston as a viable center for clothing design in the late 1950s—as a place that wasn't New York and didn't try to be. A Greater Boston native and 1955 graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, Willett had gone to New York for a few years at the start of her career but quickly returned home. "The '50s and '60s in Boston were a great time for style and design," says Willett, now 79, who designed carefully constructed coats and dresses with an eye on Courrèges and Balenciaga. Her early pieces were very shaped and in stark contrast to the longer and standardized shirtmaker dresses that many Bostonians were still clinging to. Fashion trends took Willett's work from the fitted waists of the 1950s to a looser dress style to 1960s and '70s plaid bell-bottoms; a 1957 bow-backed chemise from her line that was hugely popular in Boston became the year's second best-selling dress throughout the US. Willet was joined in the first wave of influential local designers by East Boston-born Alfred Fiandaca, who dressed socialites, politicians, and movie stars out of his shop at 35 Newbury Street in the early 1960s. Fiandaca remembers Newbury Street then as a place where women would "leave their cars with Jimmy at The Ritz and spend the day getting their hair done and shopping." Newbury Street, he says, was the only place to be for a designer who catered to a certain type of woman: namely, one with time to wile away with an open wallet. One of his biggest breaks came in 1960, when the wife of newly elected Massachusetts Governor John Volpe commissioned a suit and gown for the inauguration. Soon after, his edgy, architectural skirts, suits, and ball gowns became favorites of clients such as Boston-born socialite Babe Paley, Audrey Hepburn, and more than a "For the first time, if you wanted to live in Boston and not run to New York to shop, you could." -Marilyn Riseman