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Nina McLemore, with her jackets at Mildred Hoit in Palm Beach, started her line after executive women friends complained about their fashions.

A display of fashion clout

By ROBERT JANJIGIAN
Daily News Fashion Editor
Sunday, April 08, 2007

During the past six months, Sunrise Avenue's Mildred Hoit boutique has sold about 400 Nina McLemore jackets, making the designer's offerings the store's No. 1 selling collection.

"Nina definitely fills a niche," said Mary Gushée, owner and president of Mildred Hoit, who kept hearing about McLemore from customers and friends and finally went to her New York showroom last fall, flipping for the designer's jackets. "We started out with 12 jackets and sold out almost immediately and have been reordering on a consistent basis."

"I think Nina is successful because many of our customers feel they have been ignored by the fashion industry," said Gushée, who caters to what she calls a more mature female customer. "These women want to be able to find something that fits, that's attractive and that they can wear right off the rack and out of the store."

Mildred Hoit is one of only 10 specialty boutiques in the United States that carries the McLemore line. No department stores stock the collection.

"We did a survey about our customers," said McLemore, who was on the island recently to meet customers at the Mildred Hoit store. "The average age of our customer is 52. "We design some styles appropriate for 20-year-olds, but our target customer is a woman above 40. That's who we design for."

McLemore, 62, who is based in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, got her start in fashion as an accessories buyer for May Department Stores in New Orleans in the 1970s. In the 1980s, she foresaw the need for accessories, leading her to start a company that first produced scarves, belts and other items as a licensee for Liz Claiborne, but eventually was acquired by the Claiborne company. One of McLemore's great successes during her seven-year stint with Claiborne was the "dress for success" era silk bow ties that became part of the power look for women at the time.

"I decided to start my own business in 1993," said McLemore, who enrolled in Columbia University's Graduate School of Business in New York and received her MBA in finance in 1995, at 50. McLemore opened an investment firm with two partners and was settling in as a financial executive, but she became aware that many executive women had trouble finding appropriate, adult clothes.

"Women I knew would call and complain about the clothing situation all the time," she said. When a friend called to ask advice about her wardrobe, McLemore decided to explore the retail scene firsthand to see if there really was a problem. "I went up and down Madison Avenue, going into all the boutiques," she said. "There really was nothing out there. "I got angry at the fashion industry for their portrayal of women as sex objects only, with clothes that were not appropriate for anyone over 40."

Four years ago, McLemore got back into the fashion business, with the goal of providing executive and professional women with the kinds of clothes they need for work, leisure and evening. "Women of a certain age want color," McLemore said. "Many women come to the realization at about 30 to 35 that everybody they know is wearing black, but that the color doesn't necessarily look good on them. They want something different. "We do only a few black jackets and we don't do jackets that look like a man's," she said. "They have that. They've done that. They want something fresh and new that fits."

McLemore's jackets are offered in five cuts and varied lengths. The collection is divided into three "segments," with pieces intended for wear during the day and at work, for casual wear and for evening. "The backbone of our business is jackets," said McLemore, although the collection does include pants and skirts. Most McLemore jackets are priced in the $595 to $895 range, although they start as low as $375 and go up to $1,200, depending on the fabric. "We are at a more accessible price point than Armani or Chanel, due to our lower overhead in terms of marketing costs," the designer said. "But the quality of the fabrics and detailing is very important to us and to our customers."

McLemore, who believes her success is mostly due to talk among women fed up with designers spinning their collections toward a younger audience, does not think the fashion industry will follow her example any time soon. "Fashion businesses are afraid of catering to an audience they see as dying," she said. "The societal emphasis on youth, the drive to look young and sexy is what seems to drive them. It's all about flash. "There's also almost no women in management positions at fashion companies," she said. "Men don't wear the clothes, so they just do not truly understand a woman's needs when it comes to clothes."