Celeb Shot: Alessandra Bange-Hall
Equal parts outspoken chatterbox and tight-lipped closed book, the owner of Piper Boutique boasts stints as a professional snowshoer and sex columnist on her résumé.
This past Taco Tuesday, I met Alessandra Bange-Hall at the hottest semi-casual Mexican joint on this side of Broadway. (Well, actually, that side—if you’re speaking from Piper Boutique, the affordable womenswear store Allie owns.) The Lake Luzerne native came in fresh off a hilarious phone conversation with Palette owner Catherine Hover, whose daughter is Allie’s god daughter. Unfortunately, I’ve been forbidden from sharing the details of the story (which I personally find completely innocuous) here.
“People in this town have enough to say,” Allie says. “I’m curiously private about my life.”
Of course, the young Saratoga entrepreneur-turned-Broadway-pillar then proceeded to tell me all sorts of comical anecdotes from her life…off the record. You’ll have to befriend Allie and gain her trust to hear about a series of increasingly funny tales, including but not limited to: her late father’s crass outlook on marriage, what her 11-year-old nephew did as a baby for which she’ll never forgive him, and the all-too-true tale of one especially horrifying date.
So, despite this being Saratoga Living After Hours—emphasis on the After Hours—today we’re bringing you the SFW (safe for work) story of how Piper Boutique became a beacon for women in search of cute, affordable clothes, and how Allie has recently expanded into the world of wholesale with her brand Daphne Lo.
If I sound a bit salty about not being able to share the fun stories that make this Saratoga personality so endearing, don’t feel bad for me. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in Allie’s professional rise to Saratoga shopping scene stardom. The rest? Maybe those stories are best left untold, at least by me. But know this: The real Alessandra Bange-Hall comes out after the recorder stops recording.
—Natalie
You were only 23 when you opened Piper. What did you do before that?
I grew up in Lake Luzerne. I graduated high school early and went to college at 16 and then graduated college in three years instead of four. After college, I was working here at Ayco and then I went to the City and worked in licensing for Marc Jacobs, which was really cool and sparked my interest in fashion.
So then how did Piper come to be?
My dream was never to open a clothing store—my dream was always to start a business, and it seemed like the right fit at the right time. I’m a very simple dresser, so if you asked any of my friends from high school or college who would be most likely to own a clothing store—not me. Really, there was a void in the market for super-affordable women’s clothing and I just wanted to fill that niche. I was at a family party and casually mentioned that maybe I would open a clothing store and then felt like I had to stick to it the next day because I had said it out loud and put it into the universe.
Did you end up liking owning a clothing store?
Right off the bat, it went really well and I loved it. And I feel super fortunate because I still really love it. It’s become a very big part of my identity and that’s something I couldn’t really say when I worked in finance or when I worked in corporate. That just felt like a job that I attended, whereas now, I don’t have children so it’s my entire life. I’m so lucky to have the customers I have. People walk into a clothing store because they want to. It’s not like a doctor’s office where you go in because you’re sick, or a pharmacy because you need to fill something. You genuinely want to be shopping so it’s a different type of energy.
Has Piper changed over the last 11-plus years?
I’ve really kind of grown with my clientele. When I first opened, things were shorter and lower cut and quickly it evolved because my customer changed. My first year no one said, “Can I breastfeed in this?” and now I get that question all the time: “Can I wear a maternity bra with this?” Those are things I have to think about now.
How do you decide what clothes to sell in your store?
I buy based on metrics—I don’t just buy based on what I like, because what I like isn’t going to be what everyone else likes. I’ll never forget the very first day I opened—March 3, 2011. I had this dress that was hideous, hideous. So I hid it in the back. I was so embarrassed that I bought this dress. It came in and I was just like, “I hope people don’t look at this dress and think this represents my store.” It sold in two seconds. People tried it on and were like, “Oh my god, I love this dress, it’s so flattering.” I was like, “That is the ugliest dress I’ve seen in my life.” So I couldn’t just buy from my taste.
Tell me about your wholesale brand.
I have this habit of, when I’m bored, I decide to open a new business. I like to dive into it with this sense of mania and see how it works out. I like to try to do things that I have no experience doing, which sounds really crazy, but it’s a puzzle and it’s a challenge. I knew a little bit of the backend in terms of manufacturing from working at Marc Jacobs, but that was 11 years ago and things have really changed.
[At this point, our food came out—Allie’s singular carne asada taco and my behemoth of a burrito. The disparity was so outrageous that the woman at the table next to us, a former kindergarten teacher who now works in management at Walmart, asked to take a photo.]
OK, back to your wholesale brand, which, I should mention, is called Daphne Lo.
I originally started it just to source my store to try to cut out the middle man, and then I decided to list it for wholesale and try to sell it. Now Daphne Lo is in more than 2,100 stores, which is nuts, and I just got picked up by Zulily. It’s been a whirlwind. I’d say the most challenging part, honestly, is the time change because from a manufacturing perspective, the offices are in Egypt and China so my day at Piper ends at 7pm and then my work night starts at 8pm. I have a quick hour to eat and then I’m working until 1 in the morning.
How does owning a brand actually work?
Some of the looks I design, some of them I do what’s called white-labeling, where certain styles are already made and I just bring them to market from the actual manufacturing plant. I would say for about 60-70 percent of the styles I choose the patterns and I choose the fabrics and then I bring them to market, where they get my labels, my tags.
Switching gears, what’s one thing most people don’t know about you?
I was a professional snowshoer. I ran the 10K and I was sponsored by K2. I ran for the US team. That’s my fun fact. I did it in high school and then I retired, and then I got sponsored and started doing it again in college. If you Google my name, that’s what comes up first. Oh, and I wrote a sex column in college.
What are you most looking forward to about this summer?
The SPAC schedule, without a doubt 10 times over. Everyone is talking about the SPAC schedule because the lineup is amazing. I think it’s going to knock it out of the park.
What’s Saratoga’s best-kept secret?
The Hattie’s back bar. It’s really an immersive experience: the music, the vibe, the textures. I like to have a birthday brunch and I always do it at Hattie’s. I invite 15 girlfriends, pay for brunch—I love it.
And lastly, what’s your favorite thing about Saratoga?
The people. I think in general it’s a very kind community. I feel like people genuinely give a sh** that everyone is OK, and you don’t really get that everywhere. A small city is really an amazing thing.
Quote of the week:
“This is way better than Esperanto.”
—Overheard over the braised short rib and potato-crusted salmon dinner served at last Saturday’s very un-Esperanto-like Make-A-Wish Gala
April Fools!
Yesterday, social media was strewn with April Fools jokes. A personal favorite? Vermont ski area Mad River Glen, which is famous for being an independently run co-op, posting that it had been purchased by Vail Resorts. Locally, a post by Putnam Place bartender Don Hoffman in the What’s Going On Saratoga? group takes the cake with some laugh-inducing nightlife rivalry:
Red Flag of the Week
Orders a bottle of wine for the table after you say you don’t like wine. 🚩🚩🚩
Bridgerton is back!
Is everyone else absolutely living for Lady Whistledown, the pseudonymous gossip columnist making her salacious comeback in Season 2 of 19th century Netflix soap opera Bridgerton? No, she doesn’t have a Saratoga connection, but we are certainly striving with this very newsletter to capture the zeitgeist of our surroundings like she does!
Scam Alert
It’s come to our attention that Facebook user Rachel Ludscher Alexander has been running a scam that sells fake tickets across the country, most recently to our Overdress to Impress party this Monday. This event is sold out; if you come across someone claiming to be selling tickets, feel free to reach out to us at editorial@saratogaliving.com to verify that he or she did indeed purchase tickets.
ICYMI: This week in Saratoga Living After Hours
On Monday, we highlighted some local people and places in our first before-and-after Game Time quiz.
Then, on Tuesday, we recapped what was a whirlwind Saratoga Saturday, bringing readers with us from Chowderfest to the Make-A-Wish gala…and back again.
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