Mother's Dying Wish leads to Angela's Rye Opening

“Whatever you do, don’t die without living out your life’s dreams.”

Angela Guitard is sitting in Angela’s, Rye’s newest high-end fashion and accessories store, recalling her dying mother’s last request.

“She made me promise I’d live out my dreams,” Ms. Guitard recalled. “My dream from the time I was a young girl growing up in Rye was to be involved in fashion and someday have my own upscale fashion boutique here."

“And now I do have my own store reflecting my fashion taste, after nearly 20 years in the fashion industry working for others,” she said, glancing around her trendy new boutique at 24 Purchase St.

Guitard is confident her upscale fashion vision will make Angela’s succeed in the same site where several others have failed; most recently, Oliver’s, Sasha’s and the sub-divided Sam Goody’s record store space.

That confidence comes from more than half-a-lifetime as a fashionista.

She grew up as Angela Rotondo in Rye, edited her high school yearbook at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, then got her business degree from Iona with an emphasis on sales and marketing.

Next came jobs ranging from assistant manager in Nordstrom’s design division to work in various high-end fashion stores in Greenwich.

She also grew up in an artistic environment. Her late father, Frederick, was an antique art dealer, and her late mother, Aida, was part of the family business.

Just before her mother died around a year ago, she made Angela promise to follow her dream.

“And now here I am,” Ms. Guitard said, surveying the space she has completely renovated with whitewashed walls, antique mirrors, glitzy chandeliers, over-sized dressing rooms, plasma TV and expensive stereo system.

“It was basically a shell when we came in about a month ago,” she said. Glancing up, the once barewalls are now filled with black-and-white Vogue-style photos, from Audrey Hepburn to Marilyn Monroe.

Soft pop music purrs from the stereo. Stylishly -clad mannequins seem eye the merchandise. Red settees and pastel-colored lounge chairs invite shoppers to sit, look and sip while they shop –a back room offers customers distilled water, coffee, cappuccino.

“Shopping is supposed to be fun,” said Guitard. “And we want to make it fun, while offering stylish fashion labels and contemporary clothes that take you from day to night.”

Angela’s selections range from handmade sandals from Capri to flared jeans and slacks, from linen blazers to suede shorts, stylish gowns to summer dresses, scarves to jewelry.

“I felt Rye needed a high-end fashion boutique,” said Ms. Guillard, stylish herself in a trendy hip length black leather jacket, designer blouse, jeans and high heels.

The words painted tastefully in silver on the store's front window makes a fashion statement of its own: "Angela’s: Love What You Wear.” Flanking those words is a silhouette of Angela's face, and if it could talk it would say that Angela's other lives have helped shape the vision she brings to her boutique.

Angela has three daughters –Annunciata, 27, an opera singer at Milan’s La Scala, Samantha, 25, an artist, and Cassandra, 22, a would-be French teacher who is working with Angela in the store. Her second marriage, to a wine merchant named Frederick like her father, has produced a son, Brandon, 7.

Raising those daughters gave Guitard first hand experience in the fashion tastes of a younger upscale generation while her own life experience gave her insights into the fashion tastes of those of a certain age (although with her stylish red-haired bob, classic features and slim figure, she could pass for one of her daughters).

Now she is giving birth to the fashionable store of her dreams, bringing in numerous high- end fashion names that reflect what she calls a 'Rye sense of style' as well as her own.  

“Like they say, mother knows best, and I’m listening to what my dying mother told me to do with the rest of my life,” Guitard said. “I’m finally living my dream with a fashionable boutique of my own.”

Further information: 481-5894; www. AngelasinRye.com. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday..