Maison Marcellé
You get your first taste of Maison Marcellé magic the moment you walk through the doors. Shopping at Andréa Marcellé’s French boutique is not like walking through a typical clothing shop - it’s a wholly unforgettable experience.
“I want you to be transported. That’s the goal. I want you to come in here and feel like you’ve been transported to Paris. We study our French counterparts. We go into their boutiques. We watch how everyone is greeted with a, ‘Bonjour, bienvenue, welcome.’ And every client is walked back to the door with a, ‘Merci beaucoup, au revoir’ so that when they step back on Kings Highway, they’re like, ‘That was so much fun!’” Andréa says she can often still hear them once they’ve closed the door. “They’ll say, ‘I’ve never been anywhere like that!’ or, ‘I feel like we were in Paris!’ And we think, ‘Yes!’ We realize we can be over the top sometimes. We ARE over the top! You’re standing over the most extensive and authentic collection of French fashion in this country; we've earned the right to be a little over the top.”
Every article of clothing Andréa sells in her shop is resale. “We don’t do consignment, we purchase everything in this shop. We travel internationally for everything, primarily to and from Paris. We visit Paris 3 or 4 times each year. Some things in this shop are brand new with tags, some things are authentically vintage. The only rule is that we love it and would wear it.”
Andréa styles clients for all types of special occasions. “We’ve had the great pleasure of styling people for the Oscars and the Grammys. We’ve styled vintage movie sets. We do mothers of the bride, proms, sweet sixteens, quinceñeras…” She carries clothing size 00 to 5x. “If you want to be zipped into a pretty dress, ma cherie, I’ll zip you into one. I want everyone to have the Maison Marcellé experience. There really is no greater joy than putting a woman in clothing that allows her to see herself in a way that maybe she’s never seen herself before. It’s just fantastic.”
Andréa says she is unsure where exactly her passion for French clothing came from, as she herself is British-American. “My mother is British. I was born in England. My father is African American. He served two tours in Vietnam and then was stationed in England for two more years before his discharge. He met my mother, got married, I was born, and we came here when I was a child.”
Andréa may have grown up in the Northeast, but she is also very connected to her roots in Virginia. “I have very strong roots there, my father’s family has been there since slavery. We have a family homeplace that’s been in my family for six generations. My father’s buried on it, my grandparents, my great-grandparents are buried on it… it’s our home. It’s where I go when I need to feel who I am and where I come from.” She says that visiting this property helps ground her. “When I put my feet on the ground, I remember who I am and whose I am. I draw strength out of that dirt.”
Andréa went to Paris for the first time in her 20s and was swept away. “I just loved it. I loved the romance of it. I’m Marie Antoinette obsessed. I think she’s a hero. If we follow the history of our American Revolution and how it led to the French revolution, she ultimately lost her head for American freedom.” Andréa loves the extravagance of Versailles. “If I had the Grand Canyon, I would hang chandeliers in it and paint murals on it and just make it terribly chic. There could never be too many chandeliers as far as I’m concerned. I’m a maximalist by nature. More is more. My house looks like this place. I don’t like empty space. I want a tassel and a crystal on everything. More, s'il vous plaît!
Prior to opening Maison Marcellé, Andréa worked in a corporate sales position. “I loved it. It afforded me a beautiful lifestyle. It gave me the opportunity to travel and see the world and talk to people. I like to talk. I’m good at talking.” Andréa also describes herself as very competitive, which she says fit her previous job well. “It was really exciting.” After 35 years, however, she found that she just didn’t seem to have the same passion for it that she used to have. “I was sitting in one of those mandatory meetings thinking, ‘What could I do that would allow me to visit Paris and travel the world and wear a fascinator to work? What could that job be?’”
She remembers shopping one day and coming home to her mom and aunt “with a bag full of clothes that didn’t fit me. They both asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Look at this skirt! Isn’t this the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’ It had butterflies and tulle and all sorts of things going on, and they said, ‘Yes, but it’s a size 4, Andrèa! What are you going to do with it?’ And I told them, ‘I’m going to try to sell it. I think I’ll set up a little online boutique or something.’ And my mum thought, ‘Ohhh goodness, here we go. Another project with this one!’”
Andréa began to have conversations with Lindsay, the original owner of the Lavish Loft, when it was located in Haddonfield. “They had been here for a year. Lindsay and I had become quite friendly. I told her, 'Lindsay, I’m thinking about opening a shop.' And she said, 'Don’t quit your job. Whatever you do, just don’t quit your job.' And I said, 'Well I can’t do both, I’m going to have to.' And she said, ‘Don’t quit your job! How about just don’t!’ Hah.”
At the time, a space very close to The Lavish Loft was available. “That was what I wanted. I chose Haddonfield because Haddonfield is where I came to shop. Some of the most fabulous things in my closet have come from Denise at Pure Couture. I shopped with Denise for years because she has things that you can’t find anywhere else. And I’ve never wanted to be like anyone else. Ever. If they make five of them, you can have all five. I want the one that no one’s ever seen before.”
Unfortunately, by the time Andréa finally got the nerve to call the realtor about the space, it had already been leased. She went downtown to tell Lindsay that she wouldn’t be moving in nearby, but the road was blocked, and she was forced to cross to the opposite side of the street. “This was 2017, and there was just no retail on this side of Kings Highway. But there was a ‘For Lease’ sign in the window. I called my mum, and I said, ‘There’s a shop across the street that’s available, but I don’t know if it’s a dress shop. I want to open a French dress shop, and I don’t think that’s it. But I called the number, and the guy is here in town, and he’s going to let me in.’ My mother was like, “Don’t you sign a THING! I’m on my way!”
Andréa’s mom had been skeptical of her vision. “Mothers are very protective, and they don’t want to see their children make big mistakes and go down rabbit holes that they aren’t going to be able to dig themselves out of… like quitting a very secure 35-year career to open a dress shop. They don’t like to see those kinds of things happen to their children. So I totally thought my mum was going to come and pooh-pooh this whole thing.”
When they walked in, there were shelves in all of the alcoves. “I thought, ‘Well, this would be great if I wanted to sell purses or shoes, but that’s not what I want to do.’ And my very British, soft-spoken, reserved mum PUNCHED one of those shelves up. She said, “These come right up! You could hang bars, you could do this, you could do that, you could put all of the dresses here, you could stand mannequins down the middle. She told me, ‘Sweetheart, if you want to open a dress shop, let’s open a dress shop. If that’s what you want to do, let’s just do this.’ And so, I signed the lease in September, and we tore walls down. My oldest, dearest friend built a fitting room, and we had our Grand Opening on October 17, 2017. I quit my job on November 1st. I’ve been here zipping dresses ever since.”
Originally, Andréa’s dream was to open a shop that only sold high-end couture French gowns. But, like most businesses, she had to pivot to fit what the economy could sustain. “You can’t sell enough vintage Dior gowns on Kings Highway to earn a living. I’ve always allowed this place to take its turn. As long as it’s French, and as long as it’s chic, and as long as it’s different from anything else our clients can get, we want it.”
Andréa launched a Maison Marcellé Exclusive clothing line. “We want interesting, different, new concepts… things you’ve never seen before.” She knows that the pieces they carry aren’t going to be for everyone, yet she wants everyone to be able to have a special experience in her shop. So in addition to clothing, she created a French beauty line and sources French home decor. “We call our beauté line ‘Maison Marcellé Jardin’ - ‘the garden’. We have our signature fragrances, argon oils, and premiere candles with our signature labels and bleu tassel branding. You can come here and get a cozy pair of socks, an elegant pair of gloves, a silk scarf… these are all things we get from our French vendors. Everything you find here is something you would see in a French boutique.” That is the Maison Marcellé standard.
Like many local businesses, keeping Maison Marcellé afloat during the pandemic was especially challenging. “We kind of felt like the lost bunch. Small businesses were being well supported, but with less than 10 employees, we are a micro business. So, very little to nothing was available to us. We weren’t eligible for the PPE grants or loans, and if you’re self-employed, you’re also not eligible for unemployment."
Two months into the pandemic, Andréa was faced with a hard decision. “I'm either going to have to close and put a suit on and go back to work, or I'm going to have to figure something out.” She knew that finding another job at the time would be challenging, because no one was really hiring at the time. “So what choice did I have? Sometimes that’s when we do our best work, right? When we just don’t have another choice.”
Andréa began selling everything she could online and started thinking outside the box. “We sold candles and books and Maison Marcellé baskets… anything we could put together. People wanted to shop. We had online parties where we invited everyone to ‘Put a fascinator and a gown on, we’re all going to Zoom!’ People were craving that. It really allowed for connection at a time when there wasn’t any. We did Instagram Lives; I used to just go live and sell things like hats and earrings… things that didn’t have to fit. Thank goodness for Sierra, our cyber-guru. She had recently been hired to build our online boutique and really stepped in to guide me. She encouraged me to create video content, walked me through Instagram Live events, and carried me through some rocky times. I did a lot of deliveries. I drove a $39 candle to Rehoboth, Delaware. I had no choice. But I cherish that moment, because sometimes you really don’t know how much you love something and how special it is to you until the threat of it being taken away is there.” Andréa credits her Christian faith for helping carry her through as well.
Once the pandemic ended, business at Maison Marcellé started taking off in a new, more connected way. “It’s when we launched the Maison Marcellé Luxe Boxes. People subscribe, and we ship the Maison Marcellé magic to people around the globe.” She began hosting events in her space. “We love to bring people together, we think that is where the magic happens. We have a ball in here!” Andréa says she owes a lot to the team of women who work with her. One employee, Krysta, started working at Maison Marcellé right before her 18th birthday, and she is now 26. “We have a very special relationship. I adore her.” Heather, another employee, is in Andréa’s phone as “St. Heather” “because she walked in here at a time when I really needed some help… When I tell you I needed help, I needed HELP.” “I have an amazing team. I couldn’t do it on my own. #TeamChic is fire.” 
“It really is a privilege to be a small business owner here. I’ve driven down Kings Highway late at night, when everybody’s gone, and it’s quiet, and I see just how small my little window is. It humbles me to realize how really insignificant this is to everyone else in the world, but it is my whole life. I live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it. This is what I do. This is my child. I raised it from the beginning to what it is. And I have the privilege of sharing that feeling with every shop owner on this street. That’s not just a tea shop, that’s not just a plant shop, this is our soul. We put our whole life into these dreams. But when I get a wedding invitation on a Saturday, and I have to tell them I can’t go because I have to work, I also think to myself, ‘You have to be careful, Andréa, how much of yourself you let live in that tiny little window, the one that if you blinked at 1:00 in the morning when driving by, you would miss.’ Still, if this dream was taken from me, I’d be sick. My heart would break. I could cry thinking about it."
“It’s a pleasure. This is a joy. On its worst day, it’s still the best day. Listen, people come in here and share that they’ve lost loved ones. People come in here to confide things in us. Women come into my fitting room who don’t have breasts. Women are planning for their daughter’s wedding and are struggling with the idea that they don’t have any hair. Our job is to be a safe space for everyone … it’s a feeling, right? We say all the time, ‘more than clothes.’ Maison Marcellé is more than clothes. You can go buy a dress anywhere. But how someone MAKES you feel, I think that is so important. That’s an experience, and that's what we all want. That’s what we create here.”
In the last few years, Andréa has been hosting exclusive shopping trips in Paris for small groups. It was on one of these shopping trips that she hired Joei, her right hand gal.
“Joei was on that shopping trip as a guest and had been a frequent client of Maison Marcellé. She was celebrating a special birthday. “We were on my Paris balcony at 5am, sipping champagne, and I said, ‘I just love you, why are you not on my team?’ And she said, ‘Because you haven’t asked me!’ And I was like, ‘Well, I’m an idiot. Can we have café and croissant when we get home?’” The rest is history. 
“Joei has been a game changer for me. She allows me to step away from the day to day. I never had that opportunity before. I know that there’s someone here who loves this and is able to steer the ship in the same way that I would, and that’s just… it is a gift. A very special gift. I really depend on her. And she’s become one of my dearest friends, you know? When the doors close, we are friends. I treasure that.”
“Joei's son was one of my best clients, actually. He still is. Her little boy would come here when he was 8 years old with his budget, and say, ‘I’d like to buy my mom a Christmas present.’ And I would wrap it all up and then send her a message saying, ‘Your son is one of the most delightful clients that we serve in this boutique, he is so charming.’ He still comes here to do his mum’s Christmas shopping. We just have to be a little sneakier now.” Joei mentions that her son will still stop in just to say hi to Andréa and maybe get a piece of French chocolate. “He’s a junior in high school. He brings his girlfriend in now. It’s a testament to how comfortable and at home she makes people feel. She’s created a space that makes us feel loved and cared for and safe.”
I got a taste of that comfort myself, as my first introduction to Maison Marcellé was when Andréa invited me to her Galentine’s Day event: a pajamas and furs soirèe. While I was in between evening child activity drop-offs, I wasn’t wearing any pajamas or furs, but it didn’t matter. The space was warm and welcoming, I felt immediately comfortable, and the company was wonderful. It felt like walking into a fun, safe, come-as-you-are, French pajama party with friends I had only met minutes earlier.
One of the guests told me that Andréa had styled all of the bridesmaids for her recent wedding. Another tried on a dress she had previously been eyeing and couldn’t get out of her head. We all told her she looked fabulous in it. Everyone was laughing, the champagne was flowing, and on my way out, Andréa handed me a sweet bag of goodies she had prepared for all of her guests. I walked back out onto King’s Highway in the dark and cold with the biggest smile on my face. The Maison Marcellé magic had worked on me.
