Rosemary Kathryn DeVincentis
Owner of Pied Piper Children’s Wear dressed generations and was active in volunteer work within the communtiy
Rosemary Kathryn DeVincentis, whose Pied Piper Children’s Wear dressed generations of Baltimoreans, died of heart failure at Gilchrist Center in Towson on Feb. 11. She was 94.
“She was born with good taste,” Rosemary Schneider, a daughter, said.
Rosemary Kathryn Ingrao was born Nov. 7, 1928, in Rochester, New York, to Rose, a homemaker, and Salvatore Ingrao, an Italian immigrant and tailor who helped organize local operas. Mrs. DeVincentis was the oldest of three girls.
After graduating from a fashion program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, she moved to New York City to work at Peck & Peck, a large clothing store on Fifth Avenue, quickly rising the ranks to assistant manager.
“Her mother and sisters would always tell stories about how growing up she would walk into a clothing store and touch the garments and if it didn’t feel good, if the touch of fabric wasn’t quality, she would turn her nose up at it,” Ms. Schneider, of Baltimore, said. “She always said, ‘Buy good, and buy once.’ Buy quality because it’s better to have fewer things of great quality than a bunch of junk.”
After a few years in New York City, Peck & Peck asked Mrs. DeVincentis to move to Baltimore in 1952 to open and manage a new store on Charles Street, Ms. Schneider said.
In 1954, furniture store owner Tommy Shofer set up Rosemary Ingrao with Michael DeVincentis, a fellow Italian and a general surgeon at what is now Mercy Medical Center, on a blind date. According to family legend, she missed that first meeting but they were married within a year.
Mrs. DeVincentis eventually stepped away from the clothing business to raise her three children. Once they were all in school, Mrs. DeVincentis noticed plenty of women’s clothing stores but few dedicated to children. She opened Pied Piper Children’s
Wear in Roland Park in 1965.
“They told her it was doomed to fail,” Michael DeVincentis Jr., a son, said.
Over the next 57 years, Pied Piper Children’s Wear grew from 600 square feet of retail space to 4,000. In her free time, Mrs. DeVincentis worked with charities at St. Elizabeth’s School for special needs students as well as Mercy Medical Center and Johns Hopkins hospitals.
Mrs. DeVincentis last visited the store on Black Friday for an annual Champagne and lollipop to celebrate another year in business. Ms. Schneider said Pied Piper frequently welcomes mothers and grandmothers taking their own kids and grandkids to shop for winter coats or Easter dresses, just as they did when they were growing up.
“Having a business last 57 years, we now have three generations of customers. To a lot of them, it’s a rite of passage to take their children to the Pied Piper. We can’t go anywhere without people remembering, ‘Oh, I’ll never forget that first blue dress my mother took me to buy at the store,’ ” Ms. Schneider said. “I’ll never forget those traditions she made.”
Known as “Kitty” to friends and “Mrs. D.” to customers, Mrs. DeVincentis, who survived pancreatic cancer in the early 2000s, spent weekends in Ocean City and enjoyed traveling the world, including to Italy. The food in her kitchen in North Homeland tasted like that of her ancestral homeland.
“The best Italian restaurant in Baltimore was our home,” Michael DeVincentis Jr. said.
Her husband, Michael DeVincentis, died in 2011.
Mrs. DeVincentis is survived by three children, Rosemary Schneider, who took over the family business, Angela DiBlasi, a nurse practitioner, of Baltimore, and Michael DeVincentis, a financial adviser, of Timonium; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.