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Fashioning Her Own Store
Designer's boutique
by Alison O'Leary Murray |
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Look for the delicate, pink sleeveless dress on the mannequin on Main Street in Natick. Around the corner and up the stairs, you'll find Anne Reagan. Reagan, 33, is a clothing designer responsible for a new and unusual arrival in the center of town. Inside the Natick native's store, Anne Reagan Boutique, cashmere sweaters she designed are arrayed on tables. Tweed pants and jackets, also her creations, line the light pink walls. A CD of French jazz plays in the background. Next fall's fabric swatches are already laid out on her design table, glued to pieces of white paper in clusters of complementary colors. Her winter clothing lines, which blend contemporary and classic styling, are called Cocktails on the Hill and Charles River Stroll. Prices range from $85 to $300. ''I like it to be classical, but still a little modern," she said. ''Myself, I don't go over the top with what I wear, but I like it to have a little flair." Reagan recently returned to live in the town where she grew up. Her store is in the Clarks Block Building, at 2 Summer St., which once housed the offices of her grandfather and great-grandfather. 'It's exquisite," said Marilyn Feldman, a Wellesley resident and milliner who stopped in recently to check out Reagan's offerings when she had a few minutes before a hairstyling appointment. She breezed through the three rooms, touching the cashmere and evaluating the quality of the goods with a practiced eye. ''There's nothing this beautiful in Wellesley. This stuff is elegant." Reagan said she set out to please average women as well as serious boutique shoppers. When she began designing her own line, she surveyed dozens of women via e-mail. The results influenced the designs in her store, where women over size 10 may still find something they like. ''A lot of designers stop at size 12," said Reagan. ''I try to do extended sizes because a lot of the women I contacted wanted sizes 10 to 16." She's also careful with the cut, trying to produce designs that flatter. And her flexibility has paid off: the black version of the little pink dress in the doorway has sold out in the larger sizes. Customers in the boutique may find they're the only one at the party in an Anne Reagan design. Most stores selling her designs are in Florida and the South, she said. The only local customers she has are those who have been curious enough about the pink dress to investigate further, or those who have purchased through her website, http://www.annereagan.com/. ''People get psyched when they realize nobody else is going to have this," she said.
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Reagan didn't set out to open a boutique. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and a designer for other companies for the past decade, she backed into retailing. She was working last year as a full-time designer for a Brockton company and living in Brighton, trying to sketch designs and start manufacturing her own line from her Natick office. She underestimated the amount of money and time it would take -- and overestimated the amount of fabric. She only needed 100 yards of fabric, imported from Europe, to launch her line but her inexperience led her to order about five times that amount, she said. She needed a way to sell off the surplus, so she opened the store, which she operates only on weekends, out of her office. ''I thought I knew a lot," she said. ''I definitely learned a lot. I could write a book on what not to do." She is still designing for several other companies, including Dawson Forte Cashmere Co. in South Natick. ''She's a good fit for us. She's great," said Suzanne Pond, Dawson Forte's design director. ''We use freelance designers all the time. It's a good way to change up the mix, get fresh blood in and see new talent." Natick, long the blue-collar neighbor of such affluent towns as Weston, Wellesley and Wayland, has slowly been transforming and improving its downtown. Retailers have begun to respond, and in the past two years an Italian specialty foods shop and an art gallery have also opened nearby. Reagan's store, the only designer clothing shop in Natick Center, signals that the area is growing as a retail magnet, although it has some distance to go before it can rival the cluster of boutiques in Wellesley, a longtime businessman said. ''I don't think anybody's aspiring to be Wellesley," said Arthur B. Fair III, president of Natick Center Associates, a community and business organization. ''It's great to have [the boutique]. The more retail the better. It's good for downtown. It gets more people seeing what we have to offer." Although Reagan would like to find storefront space eventually, she's resigned to using the pink dress as her beacon to draw new customers for now. The out-of-the-way location was part of what pleased Annemarie Thompson, a Dover resident who stopped by while her daughter was at a nearby birthday party. ''It's nice to find something a little unique and special," Thompson said. ''If people could see what's in here, they'd be here in a second."
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