For over a decade, women from all over the Pontiac and beyond have depended on a specific clothing boutique on Shawville’s Main Street in order to find the best-quality pieces of high-end fashion in the region.

But unfortunately, all that is about to change.

On June 24, Boutique Gwendoline’s owner Katharine Summerfield officially announced her retirement, via her store’s Facebook page.

For the last 12 years, the high-end fashion retailer provided some of the leading lines of female designer clothes in the Pontiac.

Boasting numerous high-end brands like Montreal-based Joseph Ribkoff, FDJ French Dressing Jeans and Mexican 100 per cent cotton clothing line Abaca among others, Summerfield prided herself on offering the best quality garments for ladies on both sides of the Ottawa River.

Aptly named after her late mother, Gwendoline Hayes, Boutique Gwendoline officially opened its doors on May 17, 2007.

In the Spring of 2007, two years removed from a five-year stint in Houston Texas, Summerfield was back in Shawville looking for some meaningful work.

With her husband working as a musician doing gigs all over Ottawa, Summerfield was determined to find herself a steady source of income.

Despite holding a number of communications and marketing jobs in the town, nothing really panned out at the time.

Unsatisfied with working from home, Summerfield was seeking a more rewarding endeavour.

Not wanting to drive to the city five days per week, she was committed to landing something in town or at least nearby.

One day, while speaking with the Shawville Shoe Shop owner Marjorie Horner, Summerfield learned that what was then known as Palmer’s Boutique on Main Street owned by Myrna Palmer, had been up for sale for quite some time.

“Marjorie Horner who owned the shoe shop said ‘Why don’t you go and talk to Myrna Palmer?’,’ she said. “And I said ‘What about’? She said ‘Well, her store has been for sale for over a year.”

As someone who had no previous experience in the retail industry, who wasn’t a big-time fashionista in the first place, Summerfield was quite skeptical about the prospect of owning a high-end clothing boutique.

Nonetheless, she accepted Palmer’s invitation to take a tour of the premises.

“I said ‘I know nothing about retail’,” she said. “I had never had experience in it, none.”

Six weeks later, to her own surprise, Summerfield owned the newest women’s clothing boutique on Shawville’s Main Street.

Completely foreign to the fashion industry, the premise of operating a clothing store was largely something that fell into her lap, whether she liked it or not.

Inheriting assortments of high-end lines from Palmer’s store upon opening her boutique, Summerfield prioritized selling the best lines of clothing from the most notable Canadians designers in the fashion industry, to attract locals to her business.

With only two days of formal training under her belt, Summerfield admittedly flew by the seat of her pants, when things first started.

Learning the ins and outs of the job while operating the store, it didn’t take long for her first set of challenges to present themselves.

Considering her lack of experience in the retail industry, she wasn’t exactly confident or sure how to go about conducting business.

So, when a gentleman walked into her boutique requesting assistance picking out an outfit for his wife’s birthday, Summerfield admittedly felt handcuffed. Thankfully a woman who was at the Royal Bank across the street at the time noticed her struggle and offered to help Summerfield make the best choice for her customer.

While customers have consistently flocked to her store year after year, one of the most stressful elements of the job was purchasing new line of clothes for her inventory every season – a feeling that persisted throughout her tenure.

For someone who wasn’t exactly a shopaholic, five trips per year to visit fashion vendors in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa to restock her boutique on a seasonal basis, never failed to cause her plenty of anxiety and stress.

“You have to try and figure out what people will want and it’s a tough learning curve,” she said. “I felt it was a struggle but a lot of people said I was quick. It was very scary. Right up until the end, every season I was frightened that what I picked people wouldn’t like. For 12 years, it never, ever stopped.”

From the minutia of budgeting her inventory, to purchasing the clothes and strategically placing them in the boutique among a plethora of other things, operating a popular clothing store was never an easy endeavor.

But, being located in a small town like Shawville certainly helped.

Named after her mother who was well-known throughout the community for her countless contributions as a volunteer, the hometown familiarity was beneficial to the store’s instant success, Summerfield said.

“As a marketing thing, it turned out to be very favourable,” she said. “From then on, everybody was calling me Gwendoline.”

One of the most delightful aspects of owning the store was seeing ladies wearing her outfits whenever she was out and about on the town, Summerfield said.

“I would go to a function for instance at the Lions Hall or something and they’d all come walking by with their new outfit on,” she said. “It was like I was represented, so it was really quite funny.”

Known for her honesty, Summerfield always prioritized making her customers feel good while looking great in what they purchased. Even if it meant being too blunt, disagreeing with them, or not making a sale, she always prided herself on being truthful with the people she served.

“I would rather not make the sale,” she said. “So, I got known for my honesty. Sometimes, I got in trouble, especially if they liked it. Like, ‘No we can do better’. We’d rather not make a sale than have somebody leave looking terrible.”

While the store was certainly successful, a number of factors have forced Summerfield to call it a career.

After her husband Brad Summerfield passed away suddenly five years ago, her work load increased significantly.

And following a hip surgery with another one coming up in the near future the labour of the trade has become even harder to handle physically.

Plus, with all the free time in the world, she’s looking forward to ticking a few boxes on her travelling checklist. Most of all, she can’t wait to hit the links with hopes of improving her golf game.

“I love golf and last year I could only golf three times,” she said. “It was busy and it was hot. The year before, it rained every weekend.”

While she won’t miss the countless hours of hard work the job demanded, Summerfield will always remember the people she met and the great conversations they shared.

“They loved to tell stories about my dad and my grandfather and my mom and my brothers,” she said. “They’d come in with wild stories.”

Over the last several days, she’s received an overwhelming outpouring of support and farewells from the community.

“I’ve been bombarded all week,” she said. “I didn’t expect that. They’re sad that this store is closing.”

After more than a decade of operating the highly-regarded local retailer, Summerfield looks back on her journey as nothing more than a blur.

“A lightning flash,” she said. “It went so fast. Unbelievably fast.”

Despite leaving the work force for good, she doesn’t want to leave the space without a tenant.

A hotspot for women’s clothing in the Pontiac long before she owned it, drawing in people from all over the region and beyond, Summerfield believes it’s vital for Shawville to have a business operating in the same building after she leaves.

“I’m going to try and sell the store,” she said. “We need something on Main Street and it’s a prime location being across from the bank and it’s a known location for women’s clothing and I would say that 80 per cent of my customer-base is from outside of Shawville.”

“It brings a lot of business to the town,” she added. “We need somebody younger who’s got energy and wants to get into it.”

Despite the store’s foreclosure, operations will continue with liquidated prices for the next couple of months, starting on July 2, as Summerfield sells off the remaining items in her inventory.

Register or subscribe to read this content

Thanks for stopping by! This article is available to readers who have created a free account or who subscribe to The Equity.

When you register for free with your email, you get access to a limited number of stories at no cost. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to everything we publish—and directly support quality local journalism here in the Pontiac.

Register or Subscribe Today!