Boutique owner had a natural sense of style
Mary Mahaffey had no formal training in fashion, but the longtime College Park resident had style to burn.
Give her some quality clothes, some interesting patterns and a few pieces of chunky jewelry, and she’d assemble a successful outfit— something that looked great and had a little personality.
It was how she dressed herself, and it was the approach she took toward dressing her customers. They would come into her Sunbonnet Designs shop hunting for a new skirt and a little gossip. They’d leave with a few laughs and a look that made them feel good.
“Thatwas definitely her space in the community,” said Mahaffey’s daughter, Montgomery. “She’d pull all these eclectic things together and it would all work. Shewas really good at figuring out what was flattering on other people.”
Mahaffey, whose boutique was an Edgewater Drive fixture in the 1980s and ’90s, died Thursday of cancer. Shewas 76.
A Georgia native, Mahaffey graduated with a degree in zoology from Newcomb College in New Orleans before moving with her husband to Central Florida in the 1960s. They settled in Orlando’s College Park neighborhood, and Mahaffey stayed in the area after she and her husband— with whom she had four children— split in the late 1970s.
Mahaffey entered the boutique business in the 1980s, using her skills as a social organizer. The shop became a hub for women in the neighborhood, fueled by Mahaffey’s ability to bring people together. Shewas gracious and welcoming and knew howto tell a story, her daughter said.
“She could describe things in a way that made you feel like you were there,” said Montgomery Mahaffey. “And she knew how to embellish just enough, but not too much.”
Betsy Harbin, who knew Mahaffey for almost 40 years, was a regular at brunches Mahaffey organized. A group of women would get together every Sunday at a restaurant Mahaffey had chosen to talk about their weeks. “Sunday,” said Harbin, “was Mary’s day.” When Harbin’s son died a few years ago, Mahaffey sent Harbin a handwritten note almost every day for more than a month, offering her support and telling her friend shewas thinking of her.
“Not many people would have done that,” said Harbin, a Maitland resident. “Shewas an extremely thoughtful person.”
She also was a travel bug, driving through the American West with her daughter, visiting places such as Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon. The trips became a form of therapy after Mahaffey suffered a brain aneurysm in 1996.
“She’d get out and walk around as much as she could,” said her daughter. “She was a good sport.”
With friends, she visited places such as Italy and Scotland, reliving a trip she took as a college student.
“She once told me, ‘I’ve always had this restlessness,’ ” her daughter recalled. “She said, ‘When you travel when you’re young, your desire to keep doing it never goes away.’ She was very independent and open to new things, and she passed that along to all of us.”
Mahaffey also is survived by sons James W. Mahaffey Jr. of Charlotte, N.C., and William Mahaffey of Orlando; sister Sally Montgomery of Hazlehurst, Ga.; and six grandchildren.
Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home, Ivanhoe Chapel, Orlando, is in charge of arrangements.