We’re daydreaming about warmer days when bare legs aren’t tantamount to frostbite and our wardrobe can upgrade from longsleeved layers and chunky knits to mini dresses and pencil skirts, sans tights. The objects of our desire? Doucette Duvall’s spring collection. Stephanie Doucette, the line’s coowner, is a UMass Boston grad and former Paradise bartender who founded the line of dresses and jackets on a wintry NYC Valentine’s Day four years ago with then-neighbor Annabet Duvall. The duo’s labor of love has made its way to Boston via Betty Riaz, style setter and owner of
Stil Distinctive Clothing (Prudential Center, 800 Boylston Street, Boston, 617.859.7845), just in time for pre-spring shopping. Doucette Duvall’s latest collection runs the girly gamut from flirty to downright fierce — think spaghetti-strapped sundresses with removable contrasting plaid sashes to simple ’80s-inspired sheaths. Stil stocks two pieces from the sexier end of the spectrum: the Wrigley dress — a sleeveless, scoopneck, vibrant yellow body-conscious number — and the calf-length, hot pink Lauren tube dress with slight ruching at the sweetheart neckline. These dresses are casual enough for day, but rocked with pumps and a sleek clutch, they could easily work the nightlife circuit. You can respect your mother Earth while surrendering to your fashion fetish, too, because Doucette Duvall is devoted to being
green, with clothes made stateside of mostly “rescued” materials and always shipped in recycled boxes. To Doucette, the excitement of fashion design lies not in massproducing tons of look-a-like dresses, but creating wearable works of art. “If [Annabet and I] freak out about a fabric and there’s only 40 yards of it, we don’t care,” she says. “The 10 girls who get that dress are psyched.”
