Boomer Chic

By Kate Betts / New York

Barbara Deneen, a 58-year-old public defender from St. Paul, Minn., gets downright intimidated when she goes to department stores looking for clothes. "They're all so teenybopperish," she says. "I end up buying a size 14 or a 16, and I'm not that big. It's embarrassing."

Like many women in her age group--whom fashion marketers refer to as the baby-boomer generation of women, 35 and up--Deneen has money to spend on clothing but doesn't feel there are many options on the retail horizon. Department stores such as Macy's and Dillard's, where Deneen and her contemporaries have traditionally shopped, fall short. The common complaints are that the merchandise is not compelling (who needs another beige pantsuit?) and the service levels have declined so much that shopping is no longer enjoyable.

But all that is changing. Suddenly, specialty retailers from Gap to Gymboree are tapping into the spending power and fashion savvy of boomer women--the 77 million female Americans born between 1946 and 1964 who have long set the pace for marketers and advertisers. Last year the Gymboree Corp. launched Janeville, a Juicy Couture-style line for boomers. In August Gap Inc. introduced Forth & Towne, aimed at mature women, its first new brand since Old Navy debuted in 1994. And in September Liz Claiborne Canada launched a new chain called Yzza for the same age group. Even the denim market is growing up, with brands like Vitamina and Sergio Valente targeting hip moms who want to look trendy but don't want to squeeze into jeans cut for 20-year-olds. (Sales of jeans to the 35-to-44 age bracket are up 8% this year already.)

Marketers are doing what comes naturally: following the money. Boomers spent $42.7 billion on apparel last year, compared with teenagers, who spent $20 billion, according to the NPD Group Inc., a market-research firm. The over-50 cohort has $750 billion in spending power and controls 50% of all discretionary income. Fashion executives, struggling with a stagnant apparel market in recent years, have been eager to find a new niche. "All you have to do is look at the numbers of population and spending power of the boomers," says Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail. "You just have to say to yourself, Oh, my heavens, how can we not address this audience?"

Selling to the over-35 group is less complicated than selling to fickle teens, but boomers are hard to categorize. The generation is unwieldy, comprising two distinct groups--the leading-edge boomers, who are older, and the younger, 40-something group, who are closer to Gen-Xers in taste. Those women lead multifaceted lives; they include career women, stay-at-home moms and retirees. They want trendy jeans, elastic waistbands and clothes that are both casual and career oriented. At their age, they don't want to show too much skin; they want to be fashionable without looking ridiculous.

That leads to another hurdle, often referred to as the numbers game. If marketers put big numbers--like 50--on their products, women walk away. "Thirty-five plus is code for brands that probably have an average age of around 50," says James Chung of Reach Advisors, a Boston-based market-research firm. Indeed, the fashion community seems nervous about anything that is even remotely close to 50. "It makes you less fashionable, less sexy, if you talk about 50," adds Liebmann. "A 50-year-old sees herself as being as good as she was at 35."

Take Dana Buchman, a Seventh Avenue-based designer who has spent 19 years supplying department stores like Bloomingdale's with career staples for women over 35. "I'm 53, and I want to be hip," says Buchman, the mother of two teenage girls, who wears tailored jeans and denim jackets to work. Now, Buchman says, her best-selling items are not beige pantsuits but trendy pieces like leopard-print calf-hair jackets.

Many think apparel manufacturers are zeroing in on this market because of the success of Chico's, a specialty retailer based in Fort Myers, Fla., that started in 1983 as a folk-art shop. Chico's operates more than 500 stores in the U.S. in addition to a catalog business. The company's profits have grown for nine consecutive years, and sales surged 34.6% in the second quarter of this year, to $343 million. "Because of that growth, every company and their mother is trying to get into selling a line of clothing to women in their 40s, or 35 plus," says marketing expert Chung. "No one paid attention to this age bracket before."

Even advertisers, until recently loathe to associate their products with older customers, are taking note. Five years ago, Chung says, you wouldn't see 35- to 40-year-old women in ads. Now it's common. "Call it the Desperate Housewives phenomenon," says Chung. Christie Brinkley, 51, appears in the new ads for CoverGirl Advanced Radiance Age-Defying Compact Foundation, and actresses like Susan Sarandon, 59, can be seen hawking Revlon foundation. Upscale department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue are putting older women in their advertising.

According to Gabrielle Kivitz, senior retail analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities, Chico's focus on fit and styling has paid off. "It's appropriate for this age," she says. The clothes are sized 0 to 3, which means women can avoid the embarrassment of having to ask for a high number like 14 or 16. Service is a key component of Chico's strategy too. The company trains sales associates to create personal relationships with customers.

Gap also hopes to cash in on the need for better service among older clients with Forth & Towne salespeople, called "style consultants," who advise women on putting together a complete look. "In focus groups, women kept telling us, 'I have so many clothes, and I don't know how to put them together,'" says designer Austyn Zung, who was hired away from Oscar de La Renta. Another key service element will be fitting rooms with extra lounging space for a friend or husband. The fit of the clothes is another major point of difference with Gap and is geared toward a more mature customer, with longer T shirts, higher waists and boxier sweaters.

Forth & Towne also hopes to target four different types of boomer women by offering four brands under one roof: Vocabulary, Prize, Allegory and Gap Edition. Vocabulary is more comfy and expressive; Prize is sexier; Allegory, classic and tailored; and Gap Edition, casual. "This customer has a hard time finding clothes that fulfill all her needs," says Gary Muto, a 17-year Gap veteran who was named president of Forth & Towne last September. "And they all don't lead the exact same life. They are career women, stay-at-home moms and everything in between." Maybe apparel marketers will finally be able to answer that nagging question: What do women really want?

With reporting by Deirdre van Dyk / New York