In her just-released memoir, an Auburn native reflects on her days as a “Fashion Diva.”
Photo provided
Ollie McNamara with her companion Peter, her love of 20 years.
Ollie McNamara with her companion Peter, her love of 20 years.
Ollie McNamara spent several years setting sartorial trends as a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City before establishing her own clothing business, Capriccio, in Arizona. To chronicle her path through the world of fashion, McNamara penned a memoir, “Fashion Diva.”
“I always felt I had lived a very exciting and interesting life,” she said. “I think it interests a lot of people in terms of the career, and the difficulties one faces in life and coping with them.”
Ollie, born Olga Mysliwczuk to Ukrainian immigrants Katarzyna and Wasyl, was brought up on Case Avenue in Auburn with older sisters Anna and Helen. Her fondest memories of the area find her swimming in Owasco Lake and enjoying ice cream sundaes at a downtown drug store in between bus trips home from school.
“She was very pretty and sociable, and she had a lot of motivation to keep doing things, and that was instilled in all of us by our mother,” Helen said.
Through her time at East High School, Ollie packed her days with sports, work as the editor in chief of the high school yearbook, The Arrow, and the lead performance in the senior play, “The Ghost Train.” Under the encouragement of her English teacher, Catherine Parsell, Ollie also sharpened her focus on her education.
“My whole high school years, I could only think about graduating with the best grades and going to New York City, where I was going to make my career,” Ollie said. “That aspect of the small town is very much apart of it.”
She traces her interest in fashion to the age of 11, when she learned to use a sewing machine and started creating her own clothes, such as aprons, blouses and skirts. Her first clothing sales experience came in the Gertrude Herron's dress shop in downtown Auburn.
At Cornell University, McNamara continued learning the finer points of fashion, such as pattern-making and tailoring, at the College of Human Ecology. She was selected by Bonwit Teller, a department store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, to work in its college shop during her last two summer vacations. Through this opportunity, she found an opening to work in the store as a stock girl upon graduating from Cornell.
“I think I had a talent for it at first,” she said. “I just put one foot in front of the other to climb upward in the fashion business.”
While falling in love with the big city atmosphere, Ollie spent a few years working her way up at Teller and eventually DePinna, another Fifth Avenue store, where she was brought in as a buyer. In that role, she relied on her discerning eyes to find the right designer items to fill the racks.
“You're only as good as your last buy,” she said. “Every time you go to a new market to buy for a new season, it's like a new chapter in a book, and you color in the blank pages ahead of you.”
She was eventually courted by Saks Fifth Avenue, where Ollie worked as a buyer for 11 years, traveled to Europe on occasion and enjoyed the view from her seventh floor office overlooking Rockefellar Plaza. The position charged her with purchasing for all 20 Saks stores.
As she ascended through the fashion world, she kept her feet on the ground even as she grew acquainted with players like Oscar De La Renta and Bill Blass.
“She was always a very independent thinker,” Helen said. “She knew what she wanted and how to do it because she had a lot of innate instincts about fashion and style.”
At Saks, Ollie used those instincts to co-create Safinia, a signature line of simple, affordable clothing crafted from quality fabrics. Ollie modeled as the fictional Safinia and even had mannequins made in her image to personalize the line.
She is also proud to have offered quality fashion choices to plus-sized women.
“You don't have to be a model's size to look good in fashion,” she said.
With her then-husband, Gerry McNamara, Ollie then moved to Arizona to start CAPRICCIO, a Scottsdale department store the two co-owned and operated that eventually spawned additional locations in Phoenix and La Jolla, Calif. After her and Gerry's divorce, Ollie chose to retire in 2000, when she felt “it was time.”
With “Fashion Diva,” Ollie is hopeful her journey through the world of fashion, and the lessons she learned along the way, will enlighten readers - particularly her children, Cindy and James, to whom she dedicated the book.
And as she recounts the dream she lived, she reminisces about where it started.
“Growing up in Auburn, I thought of what the future would bring,” she said. “And it's really a dream come true. I couldn't have imagined it would turn out the way it did.”
If you read
What: “Fashion Diva”
Who: Ollie McNamara
Publisher: Silver Threads
Cost: $15.56
To purchase: Visit www.amazon.com
“I always felt I had lived a very exciting and interesting life,” she said. “I think it interests a lot of people in terms of the career, and the difficulties one faces in life and coping with them.”
Ollie, born Olga Mysliwczuk to Ukrainian immigrants Katarzyna and Wasyl, was brought up on Case Avenue in Auburn with older sisters Anna and Helen. Her fondest memories of the area find her swimming in Owasco Lake and enjoying ice cream sundaes at a downtown drug store in between bus trips home from school.
“She was very pretty and sociable, and she had a lot of motivation to keep doing things, and that was instilled in all of us by our mother,” Helen said.
Through her time at East High School, Ollie packed her days with sports, work as the editor in chief of the high school yearbook, The Arrow, and the lead performance in the senior play, “The Ghost Train.” Under the encouragement of her English teacher, Catherine Parsell, Ollie also sharpened her focus on her education.
“My whole high school years, I could only think about graduating with the best grades and going to New York City, where I was going to make my career,” Ollie said. “That aspect of the small town is very much apart of it.”
She traces her interest in fashion to the age of 11, when she learned to use a sewing machine and started creating her own clothes, such as aprons, blouses and skirts. Her first clothing sales experience came in the Gertrude Herron's dress shop in downtown Auburn.
At Cornell University, McNamara continued learning the finer points of fashion, such as pattern-making and tailoring, at the College of Human Ecology. She was selected by Bonwit Teller, a department store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, to work in its college shop during her last two summer vacations. Through this opportunity, she found an opening to work in the store as a stock girl upon graduating from Cornell.
“I think I had a talent for it at first,” she said. “I just put one foot in front of the other to climb upward in the fashion business.”
While falling in love with the big city atmosphere, Ollie spent a few years working her way up at Teller and eventually DePinna, another Fifth Avenue store, where she was brought in as a buyer. In that role, she relied on her discerning eyes to find the right designer items to fill the racks.
“You're only as good as your last buy,” she said. “Every time you go to a new market to buy for a new season, it's like a new chapter in a book, and you color in the blank pages ahead of you.”
She was eventually courted by Saks Fifth Avenue, where Ollie worked as a buyer for 11 years, traveled to Europe on occasion and enjoyed the view from her seventh floor office overlooking Rockefellar Plaza. The position charged her with purchasing for all 20 Saks stores.
As she ascended through the fashion world, she kept her feet on the ground even as she grew acquainted with players like Oscar De La Renta and Bill Blass.
“She was always a very independent thinker,” Helen said. “She knew what she wanted and how to do it because she had a lot of innate instincts about fashion and style.”
At Saks, Ollie used those instincts to co-create Safinia, a signature line of simple, affordable clothing crafted from quality fabrics. Ollie modeled as the fictional Safinia and even had mannequins made in her image to personalize the line.
She is also proud to have offered quality fashion choices to plus-sized women.
“You don't have to be a model's size to look good in fashion,” she said.
With her then-husband, Gerry McNamara, Ollie then moved to Arizona to start CAPRICCIO, a Scottsdale department store the two co-owned and operated that eventually spawned additional locations in Phoenix and La Jolla, Calif. After her and Gerry's divorce, Ollie chose to retire in 2000, when she felt “it was time.”
With “Fashion Diva,” Ollie is hopeful her journey through the world of fashion, and the lessons she learned along the way, will enlighten readers - particularly her children, Cindy and James, to whom she dedicated the book.
And as she recounts the dream she lived, she reminisces about where it started.
“Growing up in Auburn, I thought of what the future would bring,” she said. “And it's really a dream come true. I couldn't have imagined it would turn out the way it did.”
If you read
What: “Fashion Diva”
Who: Ollie McNamara
Publisher: Silver Threads
Cost: $15.56
To purchase: Visit www.amazon.com
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