Bird Wasn t For Regular Moms, It Was For Cool Moms
How the now-shuttering boutique s aesthetic shaped fashion.
Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.
When Jen Mankins announced on Friday that she was closing her beloved store, Bird, she immediately started getting emails from customers. One of them, now a very successful real estate broker, recalled a day years ago when she was browsing the racks and a fellow shopper walked up to her and uttered the following rat-a-tat monologue: “Listen, I m getting a divorce. I have a big house I need to sell quickly. I want you to do it. If you re here at Bird, I can trust you, because you ve got great taste.” That was her first major sale. “My store has sort of been the foundation of her whole career,” Mankins says with pride. “Now she s selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate every year. I don t think technology can replace those kinds of real-life experiences.”