Valentine Window at Clothes Encounters. Photo by Marìa Carey.
Nicole Thorne’s work as a fashion stylist is fixed behind glass and framed by the picture window of women’s consignment boutique, Clothes Encounters of a Second Kind. It’s always as current as the times, and always as pretty as, well, a picture.
Thorne has been designing the window displays and other mannequin and wall displays at Clothes Encounters for five years, where her work arranging clothing and props to create a fashion scene is so appealing, that women often walk in and buy the clothes in the display as fast as she can put them up. Sometimes, they even buy the entire outfit. That’s why you will find that the lovely pink and red cashmere scarf on the current Valentines Day window display is missing.
Nicole Thorne, Clothing Stylist at Clothes Encounters. Photo by Liz Festa.
Depending on the season and the Washington calendar, passers-by can see a July 4th window, an Inaugural Ball-themed display, a St. Patrick’s Day extravaganza, and Thorne’s favorites, “The Last Hurrah” and the “Back to School” displays. The former is a final homage to the beach and the lazy days of summer, a display in which Thorne gives full play to turquoise, one of her favorite colors. The latter is her true labor of love. The Back to School window display always features her son’s Brent Elementary uniform of khaki pants with a green or white shirt, along with backpacks, notebooks, and a mannequin teacher adorned with an apple. Her son graduated last spring, so who knows what the look will bring this coming fall.
“I try to create stories in my head about the window,” said Thorne. “I am trying to appeal to everyone, from the nannies on the Hill to the Congresspeople,” who sometimes come in.
Trained as a hairstylist and voted best-dressed at her high school in Brooklyn, Thorne aspires to fashion industry work and has styled for the Obama inauguration. She says she loves beautiful colors, gets a high putting up the displays and seeing a gorgeous window at Bloomingdale’s almost makes her cry.
Clothes Encounters owner Linda McMullen, who has owned the business since 1979, encourages Thorne’s creativity and Thorne says she keeps her boss up-to-date on the latest styles as they pass through the shop that Thorne calls “the coolest place,” with its variety of styles, news, labels and stories told and retold in clothes.
As fast as you can put them up … and I thought the economy was bad 🙂
I love it when Valentine’s Day comes along!