Photo by Jesse Chambers.
Co-owners Nicole Putman, left, and Rachel Bayerle, center, along with founder and former owner Chatham Hellmers, at Charm during Putnam’s and Bayerle’s grand reopening on May 31. They took over the business from Hellmers on May 1. q
Chatham Hellmers, the founder of Charm — a popular boutique on Second Avenue North downtown — took great pleasure in running her shop, which she opened in 2009.
And the business was more than just a way to gratify Hellmers’ enjoyment of cards, gift items, jewelry, accessories and other trinkets. The business was a people thing, Hellmers said.
“It was definitely the customers,” she said. “Maybe one in 1,000 would be a butt, but the other 999 were totally amazing. It was much less about the business than it was about the interpersonal relationships that happened with me and my customers.”
But, as they say, all good things must come to an end, or at least transform into something new.
On May 1, Hellmers — who will become a salesperson at Levy’s Fine Jewelry downtown in July — handed over management of her shop to its new owners, Nicole Putman and Rachel Bayerle.
And in the early evening on May 31, Hellmers, Putman and Bayerle held a sort of ceremony at Charm to mark the transition in colorful style.
The “grand reopening,” as the event was described, was certainly nothing solemn or formal. It was a happy occasion, with dozens of friends and family members and regular customers enjoying beer, wine and snacks.
It was a way for them to celebrate the fact that Charm — a much-loved shop that helped transform the 2400 block of Second Avenue into a bohemian hotspot — will live on thanks to Putman and Bayerle, even as Hellmers goes on to her new career at Levy’s. And it was a time for Putman and Bayerle to celebrate Hellmers, their patron.
“Chatham has been my No. 1 role model for a good while,” said Bayerle, who has worked part-time at the shop for about eight years. “She is the coolest.”
“She’s amazing,” Putman said. “She has a fantastic personality. She has really good taste.”
Hellmers, born in New York in 1969, was trained as an illustrator at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She later became a buyer and also co-owned an antique furniture store in Atlanta.
It was during a buying trip to Birmingham in 1998 that her life would change forever. “I fell in love with this city,” she said.
She would run two other boutiques in Birmingham, Luxe in Forest Park and Jinx in Five Points South. But it is Charm that has made Hellmers — who lives in a loft downtown with her husband, artist Walt Creel — into a local style and retail icon. Charm was a unique spot not just because of the merchandise, but the atmosphere that Hellmers nurtured.
“It felt like a safe place, especially for women,” Hellmers said, with topics of conversation ranging from jobs to men to personal lives. “We could talk about anything, and it just felt really free and safe and fun.”
As customers at the reopening drank and laughed and talked and swirled around her, Hellmers tried to share how she would describe Charm to someone who had no idea what it was.
“I’d say if you wanted to visit your weird aunt’s closet, that would be it,” she said. “Or your trash-talking older sister’s apartment, or somebody you know well, and you can just pick around and dig through stuff. But again, it’s mostly about trash talk,” she said, laughing.
But eventually, Hellmers realized it was time for her to walk away from the shop she loved.
“It started getting a little repetitive, and I wanted to expand my knowledge, and I love fine jewelry,” she said. Levy’s has been a Birmingham institution since 1922.
Hellmers approached Bayerle in 2017 about buying the shop so that she could be free to take the new job, according to Bayerle.
“For a while, I thought she was joking, and then she was very serious,” Bayerle said.
Hellmers also advised her to get a partner, so Bayerle approached Putman, who has been a close friend since the pair were in their early 20s. Putman, originally from Cullman, was self-employed as a hair stylist for 10 years, and she met Bayerle when she started cutting her hair.
“It just ended up working out, and I’ve always wanted to be my own boss, so this works,” Putman said.
The women decided to take Chatham’s offer to buy the shop last December, according to Bayerle.
Bayerle, a Huntsville native, moved to Birmingham in 1999 when she was 12 years old and later studied visual art at Alabama School of Fine Arts. She also is a manager at Giuseppe’s Cafe in Glen Iris, where she’s worked for 12 years.
Hellmers advised her to “keep another gig” while running Charm, Bayerle recalled. “And that worked out, because I love Giuseppe’s.”
Bayerle said that, like Hellmers, she enjoys the customers at Charm, and she loves helping people pick out jewelry.
Before becoming co-owner, Putman had been a Charm customer for five or six years.
“I liked how unique it is,” she said of the shop. “There is a array of things that is very eclectic so, no matter what your taste is, you can pretty much always find something.”
While working at Levy’s, Hellmers also plans to study to become a certified gemologist.
Hellmers has every confidence that Putman and Bayerle will run Charm successfully. “They are going to dominate it,” she said.
She also said the women can take advantage of the fact that there are two of them by sharing ideas about the shop and “getting excited about things.”
“I missed out on that being a sole proprietor of this business,” she said.
As far as changes planned for Charm, Putman said, “We are going to add some more locally made goods, and we want to sell local artists.”
Bayerle called the shop her and Putman’s “little baby” and said they have tried to take care of it as Hellmers did for years.
The young women will also keep the quirky spirit of Charm very much alive, according to Hellmers.
“They will expand on it and riff on it and, I hope, tweak it a little bit, because I’m getting a little old,” Hellmers said.
