During the past six months, Sunrise Avenue's Mildred Hoit boutique has sold about 400 Nina McLemore jackets, making the designer's offerings the store's No. 1 selling collection.

Across town, McLemore South Florida representative Cindy Halle has hosted four three-day trunk shows for the designer at Mary Mahoney's Worth Avenue emporium since December.

"I'm always amazed at how much business Cindy does when she's here," Mahoney said. "Women just seem to buy these jackets in multiples and keep coming back for more."

"Nina definitely fills a niche," said Mary Gushée, owner and president of Mildred Hoit, who kept hearing about McLemore from customers and friends and finally went to her New York showroom last fall, flipping for the designer's jackets.

"I think Nina is successful because many of our customers feel they have been ignored by the fashion industry," said Gushée, who caters to what she calls a more mature female customer.

The designer's clothes are primarily sold at trunk shows through representatives like Halle located across the country. No department stores stock the collection.

"We did a survey about our customers," said McLemore, who was on the island recently to meet customers at the Mildred Hoit store. "The average age of our customer is 52.

McLemore, 62, who is based in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, got her start in fashion as an accessories buyer for May Department Stores in New Orleans in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, she foresaw the need for accessories, leading her to start a company that first produced scarves, belts and other items as a licensee for Liz Claiborne, but eventually was acquired by the Claiborne company.

One of McLemore's great successes during her seven-year stint with Claiborne was the "dress for success" era silk bow ties that became part of the power look for women at the time.

"I decided to start my own business in 1993," said McLemore, who enrolled in Columbia University's Graduate School of Business in New York and received her MBA in finance in 1995, at 50.

McLemore opened an investment firm with two partners and was settling in as a financial executive, but she became aware that many executive women had trouble finding appropriate, adult clothes.

When a friend called to ask advice about her wardrobe, McLemore decided to explore the retail scene firsthand to see if there really was a problem.

"I got angry at the fashion industry for their portrayal of women as sex objects only, with clothes that were not appropriate for anyone over 40."

Four years ago, McLemore got back into the fashion business, with the goal of providing executive and professional women with the kinds of clothes they need for work, leisure and evening.

"Women of a certain age want color," McLemore said. "Many women come to the realization at about 30 to 35 that everybody they know is wearing black, but that the color doesn't necessarily look good on them. They want something different.

"Evening is a really big market for us, because this age group has a lot of functions to attend," the designer said. "And most evening collections at the designer level are very, very bare.

McLemore, who believes her success is mostly due to talk among women fed up with designers spinning their collections toward a younger audience, does not think the fashion industry will follow her example any time soon.

"Fashion businesses are afraid of catering to an audience they see as dying," she said. "The societal emphasis on youth, the drive to look young and sexy is what seems to drive them. It's all about flash.

This is cache, read story here