Falling Into Fashion

As summer draws to a close and the weather gets colder, it won’t be long before Akronites begin to seek refuge in more exotic locales. Whether you’re visiting family out of state, cruising the Caribbean or flying halfway across the world, you’ll need to pack the right wardrobe. And in this case, dressing right doesn’t necessarily mean dressing in a demure way.

“You’re only as old as you feel,” says Carolyn Leibowitz, owner of Coquette Boutique in Bath. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be fashionable and why you can’t wear things that are ‘out there.’ You just have to do it in good taste and emphasize your best features.”

Leibowitz opened Coquette six years ago after leaving a career in interior design. If she could make a home look good, she thought, she could probably do the same for the person living there. Her store has a loyal clientele throughout the Akron area and only stocks the latest trends in women’s fashion.

“You want something that’s unique to the area,” Leibowitz says. “You don’t want anything that looks like what you’d find at a mall, and you don’t want anything that’s over-shopped.”

Having traveled the world over, Leibowitz is an expert on packing the perfect suitcase. When she packs, she tries to stick to clothes made with lighter fabrics that will be more compact in her bag.

“It’s really your shoes that have the weight, so that’s the part that you should keep to a minimum,” she says.

Leibowitz suggests packing shoes you can wear multiple times, though that doesn’t mean they have to be black. She tries to pack colorful shoes that complement several outfits, and Leibowitz says you can’t go wrong with metallic shoes, one of this fall’s biggest trends.

“If you do it right, you should be able to fit a week’s worth of clothes in a carry-on,” she says.

While Leibowitz tends to dress for style, she also takes a practical approach to what she brings on her trips.

“I just got back from Greece, so we wore shorts and tank tops all day long, but then at night I’d put on a really cool sundress,” she says, adding that for that trip she didn’t pack anything in the middle-range.

This approach to dressing is ideal for resort or cruise vacations, where Leibowitz says you can easily change into new outfits throughout the day. But if you’re visiting a destination where you’ll be away from the hotel room, she says it’s important to pack outfits that you won’t mind wearing for an entire day.

“After you’ve been walking all day long, you go somewhere to have a drink, and then you never change clothes,” she says. “Why spend all that time to go back to a hotel to change clothes?”

Leibowitz says even more important than packing the right outfits is having the confidence to wear them.

“It’s all about attitude,” she says.

Jodi Morris (left) and Mary Ann Heed (right), both of Bath, are regular customers at Coquette. Morris is wearing a black dress and sweater with sheer metallic detailing, by Bailey 44. Heed’s blouse is Desigual, her jeans are AG and her sweater is Bailey 44.

Heed shows off her Desigual blouse as a standalone piece by pairing it with one of Coquette’s bold red necklaces.