D.C.’S PROFESSIONALS GO DESIGNER
Byline: Jennifer Owens
WASHINGTON — Bag the blue blazer. Get rid of the gray skirt.
Fashion has come to Capitol Hill.
From Calvin Klein to Giorgio Armani, more professional women here are breaking out the town’s cookie-cutter workday uniforms that were cast from the government’s traditional men’s wear mold.
“The professional woman is definitely more interested in clothes than she used to be,” said Harriet Kassman, the longtime designer-retailer who recently moved her 20-year-old Chevy Chase, Md., store to Mazza Gallerie, an upscale mall on Wisconsin Avenue. “It hasn’t changed — the clothes do make the woman.”
“We’re really finding that people are more interested in luxury items,” said Roberta Bernstein, a spokeswoman for Neiman Marcus, which anchors the Mazza Gallerie. “And it’s younger women more than ever.”
“I think there are a lot of young people making a lot of money,” said Peter Marx, vice president of his family’s Saks Jandel designer retail stores. “They come in a couple times a year and select smaller quantities of things.”
While their customers might be buying fewer items at a time, Marx and other retailers say increasing numbers of shoppers are bringing more business to their designer stores.
“At Saks, we’ve experienced wonderful increases,” said Audrey Berlinsky, who directs the Fifth Avenue Club, a personal shopper program, at Saks Fifth Avenue’s Chevy Chase store just outside of Washington’s northwest border.
The same was true at Stephane Kelian, a 10-year-old designer shoe store that caters to a clientele aged 25 to 35. In recent years, these customers have become mainly young professionals looking for a few good Marc Jacobs and Sergil Rossi shoes, said sales representative Char Ford. Co-worker Mina Ngoutane agreed.
“Instead of buying three pairs of cheap shoes, they’ll save up for one good pair and stick with it,” she said.
At nearby Saks Jandel, Marx said the rise in fashion among professional women has filled in gaps left at his three stores by a smaller number of wealthier society shoppers.
“We used to have many really big customers,” Marx said. Those numbers began dropping in the late Eighties, but soon, he said, “there were more people who came in and bought less, so it turned out to be the same for us.”
Highly popular at Saks Jandel this past year has been its new Vera Wang bridal boutique, which has led Marx to believe that the designer customer is getting younger.
“You get a sense that it’s that younger set and not just the 40-to-50-year-olds,” he said. “There must be the consciousness in younger people or our demographics wouldn’t have changed.”
It helps, Marx said, that so many designers have filled their lines with clean and pure looks made with better fabrics.
At his stores, he said, the hot labels come from Chanel, Valentino and Armani.
At Saks Fifth Avenue, Berlinsky agreed, saying that among professionals in their 30s, the preferred look is a sleek one influenced by celebrities such as Jodie Foster and Meryl Streep. At Saks, that means labels like Calvin Klein, Armani and Gucci.
“They’re looking to designers for quality and for apparel that will last beyond the season,” Berlinsky said. But that, she said, “goes across the board, everybody from working women to your civic leaders.”
“The serious money is going for chic and timeless,” she said. “I don’t think the go-go boots are going to go over big in Chevy Chase.”
At Neiman Marcus, the look is a suited one, especially from Armani and Jil Sander. However, Bernstein said spring is expected to include a great demand for dresses, although the jacket will remain strong as well.
“It’s not a fad thing. I’d say it’s a modern look,” Bernstein said. “We have a large customer base that needs to look professional, but needs a modern edge.”
At Harriet Kassman, Armani and Calvin Klein again are right on top. Escada is also popular, as are some lesser known designers, including Rebecca Moses.
Nick Kassman — who for 15 years has helped to run the Kassman family business, including a second store in the Willard Hotel — said professional women “are looking for things that they’re not necessarily going to see everywhere else.”
Serving professional women also takes flexibility. Harriet Kassman said her new store stays open late on Thursday evenings to catch the after-work traffic on its way to Neiman Marcus. It is also open on Sundays. And the new mall location means women no longer have to make a special trip to see her store. Still, selling to professional women takes showmanship and service, just as it does for their society counterparts, who have been entertained with teas and fashion shows.
Stephane Kelian, which doesn’t advertise much, relies instead on word-of-mouth, hosting cocktail parties that seem to be popular after-work destinations.
For Mazza Gallerie, the key is service. The mall is developing a new program of corporate gift certificates that it plans to mail to people working within a four-mile radius. It also will promote this year its full-service concierge, which provides gift wrap, coat check and edibles to customers spending their lunch hour shopping.
For the Kassmans, success comes with variety, both in designs and prices.
“Not everything is $3,000,” Nick Kassman said, adding that his stores also carry suits starting at $250. And Harriet Kassman is quick to add that the society crowd has not disappeared.
“They still dress for lunch, they dress for dinner,” she said. “And they’re still buying, bless their hearts.”
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