Merchant Profile/Diva Designer

Cindy McCartney thinks women should be able to wear fashionable clothing without spending half their paychecks to do it. 

In the three months since she opened Diva Designer Consignment and Other Delights on South Pitt Street in Old Town, she’s been doing her part to make that happen.

“We’re basically a hybrid consignment boutique because we do take the high end consignments but we also shop for new things and different things, things that people might not ever think about,” she says.  The store carries everything from little black dresses and shoes by well known designers like Vera Wang, Prada and Gucci to designer jeans and accessories, and even books about style. 

McCartney herself knows something about style; she’s spent the last 20 years working in fragrance and cosmetic sales for such big names as Calvin Klein and Elizabeth Arden. She says she knew she eventually wanted to go into business for herself, and after eight years as an Alexandrian, decided Old Town was the place to do it.

McCartney’s customers seem to be catching on. “If I want what everybody else is wearing, I’ll go to the mall, if I want a treasure, I’ll go to Old Town…that’s why I like places like this,” says first time customer Kathleen Schramm.  “I go shopping for the experience.  I seek out places like this. They give me more opportunities to be creative.”

Despite the store’s high-end merchandise and diva-like adornments like a pink ultra suede couch, McCartney says she wants her store to be affordable for women of all budgets.  “Women should be able to wear fashion that’s good quality at affordable prices.  To go to a consignment shop and pay a ton of money for something, it’s just not my thing.”

To help shoppers stay within their price range, McCartney and staff Dusty Amadio and Laura Harris divided the merchandise into three separate rooms by price: the “savvy”room for regular priced trendy items, a “Next-to-last-call” room for items on their first mark-down and a “Last Call” room for clearance items.  While some of the items are consignment, others are bought new from private designers, like those they met during a recent trip to New York City for Market Week, the city’s annual fashion show.   

Now that the team is back in Alexandria, McCartney and her team are gearing up to get Diva’s name out there.  She says business would be better if the city would allow signs along King Street pointing the way to shops like hers hidden along the side streets.  Before she knew the city’s rules on advertising, McCartney says she placed a sandwich board along King Street to draw customers in and enjoyed a nice jump in sales before the city asked her to take it down. 

Even though her business is still in its infancy, McCartney says she wants to eventually open other Diva locations.  For now, she’s going to stick to keeping an eye out for those perfect pieces of fashion.  But, she says, anything that makes its way into her store has “gotta be pretty fabulous.”

Spoken like a true diva. 

Diva Designer Consignment and Other Delights is located at 116 South Pitt Street in Old Town Alexandria. Telephone: (703) 683-1022