Lorraine Parish’s home and clothing boutique on 65 State Road is deceptively quaint. A striped awning sets the stage, and inside statuesque mannequins in carefully coordinated attire peek out the window. Though petite in size, its attitude could fill a room, which, of course, it does. Givenchy-inspired jackets hang next to classic dresses.
“Have you seen my First Lady Windows?” asked Lorraine Parish, shadowed by her signature poodles, Rudy and Pearl. “They were headshots of the seven first ladies from the era when they were in the White House in my clothes. I did it about six years in a row but this summer . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it.”
Therein lies the secret to her success. If you don’t feel it, you don’t do it.
Ms. Parish sat down on a wooden stool and Pearl leaped into her lap.
“This is my 35th year,” Ms. Parish said. “I fell in love with Martha’s Vineyard during a summer trip in 1979, opened my store the summer of the following year, and I’ve been here ever since.”
Ms. Parish’s first love was ballet, but after an injury cut short her career with the Joffrey Ballet in New York city, she opened an antique clothing store in Baltimore, Md. She already had experience sewing her own clothes to accommodate her long limbs during a time when custom-fitted clothes were hard to come by, and owning the store gave her an opportunity to branch out with her designs. The resulting style can only be described as classically vintage — clean cut lines, quality fabrics.
“You can always tell when something is a Lorraine Parish,” she said. “It’s the vintage feel, the classic, old Newport, old Hollywood style.”
After a trip to Spain in the 1970s, Ms. Parish moved to New York city. When she couldn’t find a job as a waitress, she took stock of the clothes she had made, put together a collection and trotted over to one of the most prestigious stores in New York city.
“I was fearless because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” she said. “I went to Henri Bendels, the store in the 70s. They bought everything and they put it in the window about a week later. When I had to put together the second collection it was awful. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I take it in to Bendels and her mouth opened. It was so embarrassing. So I went back home to my loft and my workroom. I threw all of that away and I started all over. I worked at it, went back there and sold it. I didn’t give up. That would have probably been the point when a lot of people would have just given up. I just kept faking it. Fake it till you make it. That’s what I did.”
Ms. Parish’s ingenuity and flair for the creative was never a manufactured skill. Her father ran his own business and he passed the skills down to his daughter.
On the Vineyard, Ms. Parish continued to use her creativity not just in making clothes, but also in marketing them. Her longest running idea involves a traveling mannequin named Agatha.
“In the 1980s I started doing this contest to engage my clients,” she said. “I did this without spamming them or asking them to buy something. If you won this contest you’d get a gift certificate. I decided to do a contest called Where in the World is Agatha? We would find a mystery country and you would have to guess which country it was. When you went to the website there would be more clues, more photos of Agatha in places in that country. I took all the right answers and put the names of those people in a jar and I picked out the winner. I did another one called Agatha – Film Fatale where you would have to guess the director.”
This summer Ms. Parish started a Have Clothes Will Travel campaign, where instead of asking customers to come to her store, and perhaps waste hours in traffic trying to get into Vineyard Haven, she would bring an assortment of clothes on a house call.
Next up? Lorraine Parish’s Bedroom Suites. Stay in the rooms above the store and be just a few stairs away from a new wardrobe.
Lorraine Parish’s boutique is located at 65 State Road, Vineyard Haven. Visit lorraineparish.com or call 508-693-9044.
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