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Fashions with an "Attitude"
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Business New Haven
8/19/2002
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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After outgrowing its Whalley Avenue digs, Andrea Ward Clothier moved to the city's Ninth Square district last month.
Why move from cozy Westville to the not-yet-retail-developed Ninth Square? As one of the first non-restaurant retailers in the neighborhood, Ward has a vision. Empty storefronts are soon to be home to a salon and a spa. And the clothing store does seem to fit right in with the arty flair of the area.
After opening in the Red Barn in Woodbridge and spending several years there, Andrea Ward moved her business to Whalley Avenue, where it spent seven years.
Ward characterizes the move as an effort to be closer to her clients.
“We wanted to be an area of New Haven where people work, where they go out downtown to restaurants,” Ward explains. “We wanted to be in the center of where all the activity is.”
The Ninth Square is not exactly the most bustling New Haven neighborhood right now, but the city has invested in a storefront facelift along lower Chapel Street and a promise to would-be retailers that the area will soon boom.
“The one thing that really developed my business is the businesswoman [customer],” explains Ward. “Most of them work downtown and many of them have asked us to relocate.”
So she did. Ward says she fell in love with Ninth Square and opened her new shop on July 26.
With the new location come some new offerings. The new store will feature a “town room” that will house a rack of sale merchandise and somewhere comfortable for shoppers' companions to sit and read or enjoy a cup of coffee while the ladies shop. Ward is also adding gift-type items to her showcases. Glass art pieces, fancy business-card holders and jewelry adorn the new store's shelves.
Donald Pliner shoes and handbags have also been introduced to Ward's line of offerings.
This fall she plans to begin selling gift baskets and packaged gourmet foods such as pesto sauces, pastas, cookies and crackers.
“I want to create the opportunity for the busy woman or man to stop in a get a gift, gift-wrapped, and they don't have to think so much,” Ward says.
Along with the in-store offerings, Ward also will go to a woman's home and, for four hours, she will delve into the client's closet, devising new ways to put together her wardrobe and offering purchase suggestions.
“We have a little bit more of an attitude in the sense that the clothes are younger and more fun so that people can go out from daytime to evening,” Ward says.
“Ninth Square depicts the old and the new,” Ward says. “There are great elements that create the character of the square and we have carried that through in our collections and interior of the store.”
The new store, at 47-49 Orange Street, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 5:30 and until 8 p.m. on Thursday.
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