Concord fashionista helps clients feel empowered

By Patrick Ball/Staff Writer
GateHouse News Service
Posted Jul 23, 2010 @ 05:30 PM

Concord — Clothes do not make the woman, but Diana Moore has built her business on the idea that the right top or jacket just might be able to make her a better version of herself.

As a consultant for the Carlisle Collection, Moore doesn’t just sell clothes; she sells confidence. It’s as if she’s in the business of helping women help themselves one outfit at a time.

“Most women don’t have confidence in their appearance. No matter how attractive they are, they focus on their flaws rather than their attributes,” said Moore, one of Carlisle’s top 10 consultants in the nation. “If they arrive here feeling less confident than they should, they leave feeling empowered. You don’t want to be distracted by your clothes, thus knowing that your clothes fit right and are appropriate, you can really focus on what’s important.”

Monday morning with Carlisle Collection wardrobe consultant Diana Moore at her house on Monument Street in Concord. (Matthew Modoono/Wicked Local staff photographer)

For the past 14 years, Moore has been offering the Carlisle Collection to her clients at Copley Plaza in Boston and her home in Concord. Her clients are a mixed bag, ranging in age from 30s to 94 and in lifestyle from globetrotting executives to stay-at-home moms who need a nice top to wear to dinner.

”Most people build their wardrobe. The things do endure, because it’s really nice quality, but styles do change,” said Moore, who keeps lists of her clients’ past orders so she can help them pick out future purchases. “It really is a relationship thing, so I get to know my clients and their tastes and styles.”

The preparedness is something Moore’s clients have come to expect and appreciate.

“Before I even go there, she’s thought about my lifestyle, which clothes in her show are going to work for me and what my needs are,” said Lee Nordbloom, 51, who owns a fitness company in the Concord area. “She’s very discrete and honest. There’s never a hard-sell or a push to buy something, and I always know that when I go there I leave with something I look good in, and I’m confident that wherever I wear that outfit to, I’m at my best.”

Nordbloom, who’s known Moore since moving to Concord in 1990, said her sister and her mother have also shopped with Moore and found perfect pieces from the Carlisle Collection. And Laurie Gabriel, a retired investment management professional from South Natick, said she’s a loyal customer who’ll drive more than a half hour to shop with Moore.

“It is by far where I do the bulk of my clothes shopping, and it’s a great experience,” said Gabriel, who discovered Carlisle and Moore’s consultancy from a friend who started shopping there. “It’s not cheap, but it’s definitely not ridiculously expensive the way shopping at a designer boutique could be.”

Gabriel said the combination of Moore’s expertise and the quality of Carlisle’s merchandise made shopping with Moore “a real time-saver for me,” when she was working as a high-level exec. However, she believes “a fairly small group” of female professionals do their shopping this way.

”The women who choose to shop this way, they love it,” said Gabriel. “I think it’s a little bit hard to get new people interested. It can be a little intimidating at first, because you are going into someone’s house and you don’t usually try something on because there might only be one item, so you’re really trusting the consultant.”

Moore’s business is by appointment only, and many of her clients have been referrals. She holds one show each season, spending the remainder of the year planning, delivering or doing other company business for Carlisle. She also sells from the Per Se collection, a slightly edgier cousin to the more classic Carlisle.

Prior to becoming a consultant, she worked in Washington, D.C. for congressmen and at the White House, but she’s always been into fashion.

“I was always interested,” Moore said. “I had a very stylish grandmother who was ahead of her time as a businesswoman in San Francisco and was an expert seamstress.”

Diana Moore for the Carlisle Collection