Yolanda Cellucci’s white Excalibur once stopped outside a small Boston theater for one of Jay Calderin’s early fashion shows. She parked at the entrance, instantly lending an unknown designer’s event a little Hollywood glamour.
“It really added this little flair to a small event by a new designer, and it was just amazing,” said Calderin, who founded Boston Fashion Week.
That arrival captured Cellucci’s place in the city’s fashion life. She understood spectacle, but she also knew when to lend hers to somebody else.
Cellucci died in September at 91. This month’s Boston Fashion Week was dedicated to her, and the Nov. 11 Boston Fashion Icon Awards will recognize her legacy. Guests have been asked to wear white, her signature color.
From wigs in a car trunk to a Waltham institution
Before the boutique and the television cameras, Cellucci sold wigs from her car’s trunk. Friends and family remember that work as the start of a business she built through direct contact with customers.
She opened Yolanda’s Bridal Salon in Waltham in 1973. Despite the name, brides were only part of its trade. Shoppers could browse sportswear, prom dresses and evening wear, then visit an on-site health club and spa for beauty treatments.
“I think women loved the fact that it was just catered to women,” said her oldest daughter, fashion designer Sondra Celli. “She was really ahead of her time.”
Cellucci herself was impossible to miss. She favored all-white outfits, feathered headpieces, rhinestones and spiked heels, a look she kept into later life. Celli joked that her mother must have sprinkled rhinestones on the family cereal because she was always covered in glitter.
The clothes drew attention, but former model and friend Jane Conway said Cellucci’s manner built the business. She welcomed customers, accommodated their needs and served as the public face of the store.
“She was loved throughout the city, and beyond that she was just an amazing woman,” Conway said.
Cellucci gave her daughter a simple explanation for choosing work: “You have to work in life anyway. So do something you love, and the money will come.”
Knowing when not to hand over the business
Yolanda’s closed in 2009. Celli and her sisters worked in fashion, but they did not believe another manager could reproduce their mother’s relationship with the shop.
“I said to her, ‘Mom, Yolanda’s is not Yolanda’s without Yolanda,’” Celli recalled.
Closing the store did not retire its founder. Cellucci continued appearing at local events and helping designers, including Calderin when he was new to Boston and knew almost nobody.
“There’s so many people in the industry, locally, she really showed up for people,” he said.
At Boston’s School of Fashion Design, she established the Yolanda Cellucci “Glamour” Scholarship. Young designers also appeared as guests on her television program, “Yolanda Style & Glamour,” which was still airing a week before her death.
Conway believed Cellucci’s own path explained that generosity. Emerging designers could see where she began, what she built and why she wanted to return something to the community.
An archive of feathers, rhinestones and white
The Peabody Essex Museum displayed 32 ensembles from Cellucci’s personal collection in its Fashion & Design exhibit this year. She had donated them in 2021.
Curator Petra Slinkard called the clothes “over-the-top kind of glamorous,” but said their purpose went beyond appearance. Cellucci wanted to look beautiful and make people smile.
“Her, being a little edgy, being a little different, offering an invitation to feel a little razzle dazzle, for her was the invitation for happiness,” Slinkard said.
Although that exhibition has closed, the museum’s next tribute will use another unmistakable possession. Her white Excalibur is due to appear in an upcoming automobile exhibition.
Boston Fashion Week’s open runway offers a different kind of memorial. Anyone can present work there, extending Cellucci’s habit of giving newcomers a place to be seen.
Celli expects her mother’s pull to survive even the November awards ceremony. “She’s passed away and she’s still selling tickets,” she said. “She’s a legend.”
Sources
Photo: Shalev Cohen / Unsplash (Unsplash License)
