San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
MCMULLEN’S BIG REVEAL
Fashion influencer Sherri McMullen doubles down in Oakland.
Like Sherri McMullen’s 17,000-plus follower Instagram account, her new McMullen boutique in Oakland is a reflection of her taste as a retailer, and a platform to tell more personal stories. At twice the size of her former store on Grand Avenue, the interior — with its blush pink walls, exposed ceiling and swirling cane furniture — provides an understated setting for its women’s apparel and accessories. Family photos of her aunts, grandmother and mother line a wall. But most striking are the store’s mannequins. Instead of glossy black or white, they’ve been specially painted in three shades closer to McMullen’s own skin tone, ranging from pale tan to deep brown.
“It was important to me that if a young woman of color was walking by the window or came in because she followed me on Instagram that she’d see herself reflected in the store,” says McMullen, 44. “I want her to know that there’s a place for her in this world, in fashion.” The Uptown neighborhood in downtown Oakland is transforming, mostly from an influx of new restaurants (Tanya Holland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen is moving in next door), and McMullen is the area’s first high-end women’s fashion destination since the I. Magnin department store closed in 1995.
“Downtown Oakland was a major shopping destination into the 1960s,” says Keira Williams, the acting business development coordinator for the city of Oakland. “In my 17 years doing this job, I’m not aware of any other high-end fashion retailer in that area.”
With independent brick-and-mortar retail increasingly losing ground to digital-first brands and showrooms, McMullen’s big move is both a risky financial proposition and bold vote of confidence in the power of community. According to Williams, “There’s always been people of middle and high incomes here who want to buy those kinds of clothes and spend the money in Oakland.”
Like Ben and Chris Ospital of the Modern Appealing Clothing boutiques or Emily Holt of Hero Shop in San Francisco, McMullen has a formidable reputation as a socially engaged fashion retailer, and has used the store’s profile to join the sphere of fashion influencers. She is an easy ambassador for the boutique’s aesthetic, and she walks the walk when it comes to personally showcasing her more editorial inventory on social media. Her personal style has, over the years, ranged from strong architectural suiting to fluid ethno-bohemian separates.
McMullen is quick to establish rapport with clients, as is evidenced one day with Jacqueline Boggan, a first-time shopper who later buys a Cult Gaia acrylic purse. She also possesses the ability to think about multiple fashion seasons concurrently. A single mother to 2½-year-old Frederick, she recently had long braids put in, partially as a nod to her heritage and in the hopes of a quicker hair routine in the midst of the store opening and trips to New York and Paris fashion weeks.
“I’ll get a break after the shows this fall,” says McMullen, sinking back into a couch and opening a LaCroix. “Also, my son started preschool the week before we opened. We’re all adjusting to change.”
Change has been a constant during the 11-yearlife of the store. McMullen’s inventory has evolved from midpriced contemporary brands to more expensive designer pieces, and recently, primarily female designers to better reflect her feminist philosophy. Business grew as she added e-commerce in 2010, and in 2011, a partnership with designershopping web portal Farfetch.com.
The boutique’s tenth anniversary last year offered the business an opportunity to further raise the store’s national profile through several events, including the first private dinner at friend and client Ayesha Curry’s International Smoke in San Francisco, and on another night a fashion panel moderated by Teen Vogue fashion director Rajni Jacques, which touched on building a business, diversity at the workplace and women in fashion. McMullen had also been contemplating a new, improved location, with more stockroom space and a private office.
With $500,000 from a mix of private investors and a small-business loan, McMullen decided the time was right to expand. The boom in upscale housing in the area promises more residents who can afford to spend anywhere from $88 for a pair of Laura Lombardi earrings to $5,995 on a Brandon Maxwell shearling coat. After almost six months of construction, and with interiors by Redmond Aldrich Designs, the new 2,775-square-foot-McMullen opened Sept. 14.
“People followed us from the old store, and there were people in this neighborhood who had seen the evolution of the space and were curious,” McMullen says. She will continue to use the store for philanthropic events focused in the areas of women,
children and the arts.
“She’s always cared about her community,” says Tonya Garrett, a New York client and friend of McMullen’s from the University of Oklahoma who reconnected with her at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. “Having a voice, speaking out against injustice, being political has always been important to her.”
Although there are now more people of color in leadership roles in the fashion industry than in the past — among them Vogue’s United Kingdom editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, former Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Elaine Welteroth, and designers Tracey Reese, Shayne Oliver and Virgil Abloh — McMullen is one of the few African American women in the United States to own and operate a specialty retail boutique focused on designer fashion.
“She is literally the only woman of color I know doing what she’s doing,” says Patrice Donelson, McMullen’s assistant buyer. Donelson contacted McMullen through Instagram after reading a story in Vogue about the store’s tenth anniversary. She sought out McMullen as an employer and mentor because of her unique position. “Spending the time I had researching the luxury market and boutiques in New York, Sherri stood out as a retailer.”
McMullen grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla., during the 1970s, the youngest of six children born to Henry McMullen, a police officer, and Betty Jean, a real estate agent. She remembers a love of clothes being passed through the women in her family at an early age. “My mother always had the red lip, the hair together; she was always dressed up,” McMullen says.
Although African American-owned businesses were common in her town, there were no mannequins of color in the stores that she remembers shopping in. McMullen caught the retail bug working at mall store Express in high school, but she studied accounting at the University of Oklahoma. Garrett remembers McMullen “always having great taste” and not being surprised by her post-graduation move to Dallas to take part in the Neiman Marcus executive development program to begin her career as a buyer. McMullen says her three years there taught her the business side of retail.
“So much of buying is an analytical and numbers game,” McMullen says. “That part came easy to me. But there were very few of us (woman of color) in the industry (and program) when I started. It could be lonely.” The young buyer moved to the Bay Area to work with Williams Sonoma on the launch of the Pottery Barn Kids collection. The process of building instore boutiques and molding a new collection’s identity was “a really fulfilling experience, taking something from concept to store.”
Although she knew she wanted to open a store in Oakland, McMullen encountered surprising discouragement.
“I wanted to be here partially because there was more diversity, more people who looked like me,” she says. At the time, the city was still recovering from a major image problem. But McMullen was confident. “I knew that there were women who were looking, waiting for a shopping destination over here.”
Using her own money and a $50,000 investment from friends and family, McMullen opened her original location on Piedmont Avenue in 2007, then moved to Grand Avenue three years later.
Because the business began on steady footing, it was able to weather the 2008 financial crash that sunk other newly opened ventures, and grow. Part of what helped McMullen stand out, says early client Laura Leigh Geist, was her focus on community and her ability to “build the relationship, remember who you are, what you purchased and how the things she has work with your life.”
At the moment, the store carries designers ranging from the more classically oriented New York brand Adam Lippes to the adventurous French Jacquemus. Anna Chiu of San Francisco fashion label Kamperett says it was a major boost when McMullen started carrying the line in 2017.
“To see our name in the window with the other designers she carried was a big deal when we were still trying to figure out where we belonged as a brand,” Chiu says.
“Her selections are conscious, fashion-forward and timeless,” says Ayesha Curry. “I love that she features many up-and-coming designers as well. I can’t wait to see how receptive Oakland is to the new location.”
Early signs are encouraging. McMullen says the store’s opening weekend brought in almost double the expected business. Even more importantly, women like McMullen assistant buyer Donelson continue to find her on Instagram.
“Several times a week now I have young women of color who reach out to me and ask how you get into this business,” McMullen says. “I answer those messages because there needs to be more of us.”