A dual milestone for The Cedar Chest: Thornes anchor turns 75, while sister store officially opens Friday

By MAX BOWEN

For the Gazette

Published: 10-12-2022 2:39 PM

NORTHAMPTON — Cedar Chest, one of downtown’s longest-running businesses, is celebrating two important occasions this month — its 75th birthday and the opening of a sister business.

Known as Stay Golden, the recently-opened shop features a wide array of women’s clothing and is also located in Thornes Marketplace like its parent store. Started last summer as an eight-week popup called Cedar Chest Fashion, it saw immense success, said Lauren Gunther, merchandise manager for both locations, and so the decision was made to establish it as a permanent second business.

Work on the new location began this spring, including a rebranding as Stay Golden with the help of Carrie Lenard of Lenard Design. Gunther said the name is a reference to the sunset, a “golden hour” when everything feels good.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of day you’re having ... everything’s OK,” Gunthers said. “I feel good. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s go just stand outside and enjoy life.”

A grand opening for Stay Golden is scheduled for Friday, in conjunction with Arts Night Out. Both businesses are owned by Rich Madowitz, also one of the co-owners of Thornes. Approximately 30 people work at the shops, with a half dozen dedicated to Stay Golden.

Gunther said the fashion world moves quickly, and styles can be out by the time someone discovers them. The styles at Stay Golden are focused on both the professional and the student, since the area has such a large college-age population. She described the clothing as being for people ages 20-60 with a “mix-and-match” theme, where one item can be paired with another.

“Things that you can easily update your wardrobe with, a few new pieces that can mix with stuff that you already have,” she said.

Getting to work on Stay Golden was fun for Gunther, who has a background in the fashion industry. When COVID hit, fashion shows couldn’t be held, and it’s only recently that they’ve been able to resume. Every two months Gunther has been attending shows to find brands that would be a good fit for Stay Golden. Taking the popup location and making it permanent included expanding the available space, and many more styles can be featured. The result is an eclectic layout with clothing types of all kinds.

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“We’ve been able to kind of tailor some of the products in here for people to be able to have conversations around them,” Gunther said.

Among the brands at Stay Golden is Grade and Gather, which Gunther described as “seasonless,” with a lot of neutral colors and a classy, comfortable feel. Tom’s Shoes is a familiar name from years of being featured at Cedar Chest and was migrated to the new site. Gunther joked that her teenage niece went to the store and said it was like being in her closet.

“Our goal is we want people to find something that makes them feel good,” Gunther said. “And it’s been really fun to help people who don’t know what they want and help them find that. I think we really want everybody to leave happy and raise their confidence level. That’s the biggest thing.”

Cedar Chest’s birthday

Alongside the expansion is the recent 75th anniversary of Cedar Chest being in business. The store was originally on Main Street in Northampton and dates back at least to 1947, the year the oldest-known photo of the shop was taken. After Brinkley and Gordon Thorne, and their wives Mazie Cox and Annie Woodhull, purchased the McCallum Building in 1977 and launched Thornes Marketplace, Cox purchased Cedar Chest and moved the business into Thornes, where it remains an anchor store.

Gunther remembers going to Cedar Chest as a child with her mother, and began working there in 2010 after a stint at Faces — another clothing store in Northampton which closed in 2019. She’s spoken to a number of people that she grew up with who are excited to see the different offerings at the store.

Featured in Cedar Chest are historical photos of the business over the years and that’s a feeling that is maintained with the current ownership, Gunther said. The Clinique counter, which has been around for 30 years at Cedar Chest, isn’t going anywhere, she said, and so the goal is to blend the mainstays while at the same time pursuing new ideas.

“We kind of have the opportunity to make it whatever we wanted it to be, but based on the structure that had been created over the years and years and years,” said Gunther. “Trying to modernize it a little bit and but still keep the identity that people had grown up with.”

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