There’s nothing a girl likes more than to be walking down the street and find herself in a new shop she realizes she never knew was there which, all of a sudden, seems to embody many things she must have — or at least dream to have. Such was my experience the other day as I walked up Congress Street from a treat-myself-to-lunch day at the new and very popular Front Room, where I sat next to the St. Lawrence’s Bobby (a/k/a The King of Munjoy Hill) and a neighbor of mine, all of us there separately for the very affordable and yummy fare. This is community: a restaurant full of an equal part total strangers and people I know.
As I was meandering home, I saw that the door to Donatelli’s Tailor Shop stood open, bearing a sign that read “boutique.” I remembered that I wanted to stop there and ask them if they could fix some of the blouses my mother brought me from Oaxaca, which would fit a Rubik’s cube perfectly. Suddenly, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe style, I was transported into another realm. This is no mere tailor shop. The Donatelli sisters, whose parents were Italian immigrants and traditional Munjoy Hill tailors, recently added the “boutique” to the tailor shop. Here they stock fashiony J Brand Jeans, Nicole Miller, and new designers who are friends of friends and specialize in ethereal tops, tailored jackets, and totally cute belts and headbands. And it seemed half of the store was 50 percent off.
There’s nothing pristine or quaint about this place, and you’d never for a second think you were in the Old Port. Hopefully it will stay that way. The mirror is probably true to form but since I’m so spoiled by the shopping aphrodisiac of thin mirrors, this one made me sure that I was looking at a fat mirror. When I pulled aside the heavy curtain, the whole neighborhood was there to inspect whether a way marked-down pair of J Brands fit my butt, and to encourage me to think of myself as “curvy.”
On a given day the store overflows with kids and babies and Donatelli husbands and baby sitters and the old man from around the corner who needs his pants hemmed and the rock-star kid from two blocks down who’s convinced his pants flare too much and wants them taken in. This place is loud, vibrant, and totally human. It’s a completely different shopping experience from your usual designer boutique. The Donatelli women are totally stylish and attractive, so they are great models for those of us who hope to have those words uttered in the same sentences as our own names.
After my purchase of marked-down jeans, which they will hem for free, I decided I needed to celebrate with an iced coffee from the Hilltop and a short walk to the Prom to tone that butt of mine, of which the mirror on the wall proved more truth than fiction.
