Carrots: Sweater Dresses and Shirtdresses Cover San Francisco
The city of San Francisco pioneered the hippie look in the late 1960s and then watched as basics took over thanks to the city’s retail behemoth Gap Inc. But recently, the shirtdress and the sweater dress have been stealing the hearts of San Francisco women at one recently opened boutique.
Shirtdresses and sweater dresses have been the top sellers at Carrots, which opened Nov. 1 at 843 Montgomery St. in the city’s Jackson Square neighborhood. In the store’s first month of business, sweater dresses by Italian label Bruno Manetti and shirtdresses by New York–based Nili Lotan have been the store’s cash crop.
Carrots co-owner Melissa Grimm said Manetti’s cashmere sweater dress, which retails for $900, and Lotan’s silk shirtdress, which retails for $573, are hits because they can be many things to a multitude of women, Grimm said.
Both garments are easily worn by women of many different shapes, according to Grimm. Both can be worn as a dress or, if bundling up is required, with pants or tights.
The boutique also aspires to cast a wide net with its merchandise. It features more than 50 ready-to-wear lines for women and men in the more than 4,000-square-foot space. Melissa Grimm and her sister, Catie, opened the store to give the city’s shoppers a boutique experience with designer names such as Peter Som, Thakoon and Narciso Rodriguez.
The novice retailers also staked a claim on real estate that might intrigue Bay Area history aficionados and Alfred Hitchcock fans. The boutique is located at the site of landmark restaurant Ernie’s, which closed its doors in 1999. Several decades ago, the restaurant was used to film a scene in Hitchcock’s 1958 film classic, “Vertigo.”
Melissa Grimm earned a master’s degree in accounting from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Catie Grimm has a degree in art history from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Their family owns and operates Bakersfield, Calif.–based Grimmway Farms, which reportedly is one of the world’s largest growers and shippers of carrots and, hence, the inspiration for the name of the boutique. Melissa Grimm said she and her sister have discussed opening other stores in the future but in the meantime will concentrate on making their boutique thrive.
—Andrew Asch
