Preparing For Departure:NoLita's Mayle Set To ShutterEarly Next Year

Designer Jane Mayle has announced that her popular Elizabeth Street boutique will close next February as she folds her decade old label. The holiday/resort collection will be her final delivery, and she will not offer a Spring 2009 Collection. Mayle tells WWD that accelerating market dates and promotional pressures were important factors in her decision to close her business, and the end of her store's lease offered fortuitous timing:

"It seems like a commercial cul-de-sac in a way that the customer gets tired before collections even hit stores," Mayle said. "How I came into this business was all about dreaming and building a wardrobe you would be seduced by. That mystery and remoteness ans insouciance have disappeared from fashion in order to accelerate the product. I feel I have just become another cog in that machinery."

Mayle certainly isn't the first designer to be disillusioned by the pressures of the rag trade, and she maintains that her business is healthy with $5 million in sales a year from 65 wholesale accounts. We have to give her credit for leaving when her interest has ebbed rather than letting her label chug along on autopilot without inspiration, but both her retail and wholesale customers will surely miss her original and personal designs that managed to find an enthusiastic audience without benefit of the advertising and publicity she eschewed. She promises to return to fashion in some other capacity, but just what that will be remains to be declared. In the meantime, her shop will be open at 242 Elizabeth Street until February offering your last chance to pick up her final collections.
Jane Mayle To Close Business (WWD)