By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer
While store owner Michelle Mortmon is no stranger to the fashion industry, she’s currently in the process of opening a new boutique in Hotel Herringbone called “Golden Green.”
Mortman originally had the idea to open a boutique in Waco when her daughter Avery, now a sophomore, decided to come to Baylor.
“When Avery started going to Baylor, I had in my mind that, ‘Hey, maybe I’ll try to open a store here one day,'” Mortman said. “So over the summer, I was browsing through Spice Village, and I’ve done a Spice Village-type model before. With my previous boutique, I had some booth-type places in Frisco, Dallas and other cities. And so I looked into that.”
When Mortman discovered Spice Village had an extremely long waiting list, she decided to look into properties for a boutique. She had heard through a Facebook group that the downtown Hotel Herringbone would be opening a retail courtyard.
In August, she signed a lease on the hotel’s retail space and began the permitting process for her boutique.
“Our build-out has gone super fast,” Mortman said. “We’re supposed to be finished with the build-out hopefully by Wednesday or Thursday of this week. Then, we’ll be doing some store setting and preparing to open.”
Mortman plans to hold a soft opening for the boutique during the week of Nov. 23 and a grand opening on Dec. 6 and 7. The grand opening event will offer an array of refreshments, discounts and giveaways for attendees.
Most of the products and clothes in the boutique will cater to college students’ style, but also to tourists and hotel guests, Mortman said.
Mortman said a large portion of her inspiration for the boutique comes from her daughter Avery’s style. This led Mortman to invite her to collaborate during the creation process of this boutique, she said.
“It’s been cool to just walk through that process with her,” Avery Mortman said. “I’m very thankful she’s allowed me to have such a big say in everything that she does.”
Above all else, they wanted to make sure the store’s curation was personal to Baylor while still catering to the city of Waco, Avery Mortman said. She and Mortman sought inspiration from styles and pieces that she would want to see in a boutique in her college town.
“I think a lot of students are looking for the place where they can go for their perfect game day outfit or their perfect rush outfit, or even if they have interviews or career day, or different things like that,” Avery Mortman said. “I just feel like there’s not really a hub for that and so I just encouraged my mom to look for things that students would wear.”
Throughout the process of curating the boutique, Mortman also asked for help from one of Avery’s friends — Raleigh, N.C., senior Molly Roberts.
Roberts, an apparel design and product innovation major, is incredibly enthusiastic about what the boutique will offer the city of Waco and the students of Baylor.
“The boutique is obviously geared towards women’s wear, and I think it’s gonna be geared towards the Baylor audience and college girls,” Roberts said. “But there’s also gonna be a space for tourists in a way that you can shop if you’re looking for gifts or game day clothes, or anything that you’d wear in your day-to-day life that might elevate your style.”
Roberts said that in the spring semester, she will be working alongside Mortman in an internship role at the boutique. This will help her gain experience in running a boutique, but it will also fulfill her apparel internship credit for her major.
“It’s going to allow me to see what it takes to open, manage and run a successful boutique,” Roberts said. “Some of my tasks will be assisting with daily retail operations at the physical store, the inventory management, merchandising sales and in the buying of the merchandise and trend forecasting of what we’re going to want in the store with a possible opportunity to go to the Dallas market.”
Mortman explained that aside from selling clothes and various lifestyle products, she wants the boutique to serve as a place for students to find jobs and gain experience in the fashion industry.
“I’m hoping to be able to provide job opportunities to Baylor students that are interested in those types of opportunities, and also bring more jobs like that to the Waco area,” Mortman said. “I feel like a lot of these girls that are studying fashion or just in college and looking for a job, for some of them, there’s only so many places they can work in Waco.”
The boutique will be open seven days a week during regular business hours with extended hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Mortman said.
