Style with a story

Designer Heather Wylie Fleming is the owner of Bohemian Bop, a boutique and fashion studio in the Loft District downtown.

And despite the funky, personal feel of her place — almost like an old dressmaker’s shop with a modern edge — Fleming is in tune with modern marketing.

For example, she tends to agree American consumers live in the so-called “experience economy.”

“That’s what consumers want,” she said. “No matter what you’re selling, consumers don’t want just a product anymore. They want an experience. They want to come in [and] buy the product, and then they have a story to tell behind it.”

Fleming tries to give her customers what they want while staying rooted in what she loves: making fashionable but wearable clothes, often using knits in unexpected ways.

And her shop is meant to be a place to enjoy and savor as one orders or picks out a garment, a place filled with art and fabric and family memorabilia, a place where the garments have more than colors and sizes — they have stories.

Fleming, 29, a graduate of the University of Alabama and Parsons School of Design in New York, has two lines. Bohemian Bop is the name for her line of custom, Alabama-made T-shirts and crop tops. 

Bohem is Fleming’s line “for a little more sophisticated audience,” she said, and features slip dresses, maxi dresses and other garments.

The joining point between the lines is Fleming’s use of knits. For example, she showed off a couple of dresses made from knit, long-sleeved tops with skirts attached. One skirt was silk, the other a lush, floral-print sateen.

This love of knits is not surprising. Fleming was born in Florence, a clothing manufacturing hub. Her father, Terry Wylie, and grandfather, Paul Wylie, started a well-known T-shirt manufacturer called Tee Jays. And she’s the fourth generation of her family to work in the industry. 

Bohemian Bop moved into its current space — about 1,000 square feet — in March 2015, according to Fleming.

“When I moved in here, I did not intend for it to be a retail shop,” she said. “It was only meant to be my studio. People kept wanting to come in to shop, and I started by appointment only, but people wanted normal hours.”

The shop began keeping regular hours in May 2016. 

Fleming sells the uniqueness of her products and her space.

Everything is currently made and designed in house, according to her website. However, she said, she doesn’t want to overwhelm customers with garments.

“I don’t want to do product overload because … that can take away from the experience a little bit,” she said, adding that she wants to keep “a cool, funky vibe.”

Fleming heightens the atmosphere for visitors with prints and other artwork from local makers. For example, near the massive cutting table hangs a colorful chandelier made of sewing ribbon by Andy Hopper. She said the art is something more than just the product to experience.

Customers at Bohemian Bop can often customize the items they purchase, involving them in the process, according to Fleming.

“If someone pulls a skirt and it’s too short, we can say, ‘We’ll make one to fit you,’ and they can choose their color,” she said. 

Shoppers can help design their own T-shirts.

“We have the silk screen in back if people want to choose one of our pre-existing graphics and then choose a blank T, we can make that for them, and they can watch the process happen,” Fleming said. “So it’s just changing the shopping experience.”

Shoppers in search of products with stories behind them can find garments on sale at Bohemian Bop that are made in small batches.

“Some of the pieces are one-of-a-kind, made with vintage lace or something that cannot be recreated from a pattern six months later,” Fleming said,

Fleming and Hope Carrico, her pattern maker and another Florence native, also make garments from their fabric scraps as often as possible —bralettes or slip dresses, for example  — giving the clothing a subtle eco-vibe.

 “I will tell (Carrico) to make something out of the scraps, and she’ll make something beautiful and one-of-a-kind,” Fleming said.

This approach keeps the clothing keeps “extremely unique and different and interesting, and it feels like it’s meant for you, or for me, not for everybody,” Fleming said.

Fleming said she thinks young consumers are turning back to craft in their clothing.

“Fashion in the ’80s and ’90s was just volume, volume, volume,” the designer said. “I think now people like to purchase and keep something. It’s not disposable fashion. It’s more keepsake fashion.”

Bohemian Bop, at 2115 First Ave. N., is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, including area retailers that carry the products, call 202-3311 or go to bohemianbop.com.