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March 24, 2008 11:31 pm
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Photos
Matt Viglianti/Salem News
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Sigrid Olson: From clothing stores to closing stores
Sigrid Olsen's 50 retail shops are going out of business, but the designer is still full of ideas.
By Amanda McGregor
CNHI News Service
HAMILTON, Mass. — From her beginnings in a tiny design studio over a Rockport storefront, Sigrid Olsen grew her clothing business into a major retail and homeware line, with 54 stores across North America and merchandise in major department stores.
The Hamilton resident's popular line of women's clothing and accessories is noted for its bright colors and prints, many of which she designed. But that era is all but over.
"I never expected it to come to an end," Olsen said. "That's what happens when you lose control of your business and it gets so big."
Major retailer Liz Claiborne bought Olsen's brand in 1999 and franchised Sigrid Olsen stores - one is located on Boston's trendy Newbury Street. Olsen stayed on as artistic director, but Liz Claiborne announced in January that it would be closing down the Sigrid Olsen brand. The past few months have been marked by ups and downs for Olsen.
"I've had some pretty giddy and happy feelings, thinking, 'Oh boy, what can I do now?'" Olsen said. "But nothing can compare to building a company from nothing. Many people were with me for 10 or 15 years. It was really almost like a family."
However, she believes it's an opportunity to open a new door.
"For 24 years, I've been doing one thing," she said, "which for an artist usually is not the case."
Running a major clothing line required Olsen to stay up on trends and interpret them and make them wearable "for real women," she said.
"I designed clothing to fit women of all ages and all sizes," she said, "to be flattering and fashionable and not too dowdy. ... A lot of women out there are floundering looking for clothes to wear."
She traveled to Europe at least twice a year to scout fabrics and styles, went to the annual fabric show in Paris, took in fashion shows and was always looking at what people wore. But she prided her line on being "unique and different."
"Part of it is that we grew up outside the apparel industry," she said. "We produced a line based on my color palette and my artistic background, and I liked to allow people to really use their creativity and have fun with it."
Already, she misses the work.
"Going to Europe and getting ideas, sketching designs on a plane," she said, "getting your samples back and selling them. It's the cycle of creating."
She misses the people, too, but not the deadlines.
"You don't realize how difficult it is until you sit back," she said. "There's too much to do and not enough time, because fashion is so seasonal and so cyclical."
A line is born
Olsen grew up in Connecticut and came to the North Shore to attend Montserrat College of Art in Beverly. She graduated in 1974, in a class of seven students, with a degree in printmaking and painting. She still serves on the Montserrat board of trustees.
She founded her company in Rockport in 1984 and later moved it to Beverly. She lived on Cape Ann for many years, and she and her husband, Curtis Sanders, bought a house in Hamilton about eight years ago. They still live on Rocky Neck in Gloucester during the summer.
"I set foot onto Cape Ann, and I fell in love," Olsen recalled while sitting in her home office in Hamilton. The back of her Cutler Road home is almost entirely windows facing the woods, and light poured inside during an interview Monday afternoon. The home is meticulously decorated, and Olsen's office bears the fruits of her success - prints and furnishings that she designed.
"BE INSPIRED. Sigrid Olsen," reads a colorful sign that hangs on the wall over her desk.
At 54, Olsen is a striking woman with a blond, bob haircut. She is a yoga fanatic, so the eclipse of her clothing line has given her a chance to devote more time to the discipline. She has a yoga retreat planned in Mexico and has been traveling regularly in the past few months.
"I like that mind-body connection (with yoga)," Olsen said, "and it's a great way to stay young and flexible your whole life."
She also loves gardening and cooking and hopes to take up horseback riding after a long hiatus.
"It's funny because I grew up working at a stable as a teenager and I live in Hamilton, so you would think I'd ride," she said.
Olsen's parents were also artists and always encouraged her to pursue art. Her mother was Italian, and her father is Danish. He is still alive - and still a painter, she said.
Olsen has a grown son and daughter and four stepchildren, as well as two grandchildren and three stepgrandchildren.
End of an empire
Most of Olsen's stores will be closed by mid-2008. She has been moved by hundreds of customers who have e-mailed her since the news broke that her chain is closing. She said what she misses most is the people she worked with over the years, and the customers who purchased her clothing and accessories.
"I really appreciate how they've reached out and told me how they feel," Olsen said.
When Liz Claiborne bought her business, Olsen stayed on and was still very involved in the enterprise.
"The problem is that it got very unfocused," Olsen said. "There were a lot of people involved in the decision-making process.
"The buck didn't always stop with Sigrid. It should have, but it didn't."
Last July, Liz Claiborne put some of its brands on "strategic review," and the ax fell on Olsen's brand in January. Claiborne sold off other brands, including Ellen Tracy, Laundry By Design, C&C California and prAna (which sells climbing and yoga accessories).
A press release from Liz Claiborne says Olsen's brand was losing money the past few years, and the company is trying to "hone our portfolio and better focus our resources on building fewer, more powerful brands."
"Once they announced the strategic review in July, there was a lot of conjecture and suspense," Olsen said, "so I can't say I was completely surprised."
Liz Claiborne still owns Sigrid Olsen's name, which restricts her from what she can design and sell in the future. However, stationery is OK -- and it happens to be something she loves to design.
"I can still use my name, but not on apparel and a number of things," Olsen said. "I can still use it on paper goods and artwork, basically on multimedia."
"It's where I started, as an artist and printmaker," she said as she plucked items off a shelf - handmade cards that she designed, notebooks, a matchbook and other paper goods. "Going in another direction is not scary - (what's scary is) not knowing how things are going to turn out.
"I believe what happened happened for a reason," Olsen said, "and I'm getting ready to do something else."
Amanda McGregor writes for The Salem News of Salem, Mass. E-mail her at amcgregor@salemnews.com.
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