MAGNOLIA

Hazlehurst native dresses Clinton, Beltway who's who

Wonder Woman has her bracelets of submission and lasso of truth. C-suite executives have Nina McLemore.

Bracey Harris
The Clarion-Ledger

Nina McLemore doesn't dress the weak.

Her clientele is a roster of the Beltway starting lineup: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, journalist Gwen Ifill, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. At least a quarter of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, including PepsiCO Chief Executive Indra Nooyi, have appeared publicly in McLemore's clothing, according to a 2014 story in The Wall Street Journal.

Women who don't shy away from being noticed.

So don’t expect to see pale pink in her designs.

The garments in the Mississippi native’s high-quality clothing line are magenta, jade green, Persian blue, silk red.

“The color is strong,” McLemore said. “I don’t do weak colors.”

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Philanthropists. The working mom. Advocates working to close the gender-wage gap. The woman running, flats pounding the pavement (to be swapped out later for heels), hoping to catch the Metro in time. They’re all muses for McLemore.

The most important, however, is her mother.

“Nina’s mother is absolutely one of the most interesting people I have ever met and I’ve met a lot people,” said family friend Aubrey Lucas.

The late Margaret McLemore (maiden name Pope) was an artist, who also went to Cuba prior to the embargo being lifted. Margaret obtained a rare journalist visa and wrote about her travels for the local paper. When China became "open" during President Richard Nixon's administration after nearly three decades of isolation, Margaret was one of the first Americans to visit. She acquired the nickname "iron butterfly," much like Southern women are "Steel Magnolias."

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If Nina McLemore got her sense of wonder from her mother, she got her vibrant color palette from a childhood spent working in the family’s floral shop. The business, McLemore Florist & Gifts, located off U.S. 51 in Hazlehurst, was the epicenter of town activity.

Who was getting married, who was having a funeral — as the one who took orders at the front of the shop, young Nina knew it all.

“There were a wide range of personalities and people ... whether they came in a suit or whether they came in coveralls, to me everybody was the same,” she said.

Talking with any and everyone during her early years, gaining a sense of what she called “Southern friendliness” proved formative.

“To this day I will go speak to anyone, anywhere. On a plane, on the street, I have no reluctance."

That willingness to initiate polite conversation might have changed her trajectory.

McLemore, who majored in language at Millsaps College (and later attended Columbia Business School), studied abroad her junior year at the Université d’Aix-Marseille in France. By chance on the ship ride back home, she met two women who were buyers for a Philadelphia store.

Once on shore, McLemore informed her parents she was changing her career plans.

In some sense, fashion wasn’t new to her. Her grandmother was a seamstress at Camp Shelby who made uniforms for soldiers in World War II. And the women in McLemore’s family, herself included, made their own clothes.

They would pick out Vogue patterns from a local fabric store and sew them together.

“You could have anything you wanted,” McLemore said.

Yves Saint Laurent. Givenchy. Her time studying French is evident as the names roll off her tongue.

How she wore her clothing mattered, too.

“Style is extremely important to Southern women. For Southern women, how you dress really summarizes who you are,” she said.

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Told by her father that she could be whatever she wanted to be, it wasn’t until McLemore arrived in New York that she learned the word "misogyny."

A male colleague had been giving her trouble. Finally, another coworker took her aside and said, “Nina, don’t you understand — he’s a misogynist.”.

She soon learned another another concept — the glass ceiling.

The decade between 1975 to 1985 saw women grow from representing 25 percent of the workforce to 50 percent. During this time, McLemore' s budding passion to help women advance in their careers became full blown.

As the Vice President GMM for The May Department Stores Company, later acquired by Macy's Inc. McLemore saw an opportunity: Despite the increased need for workwear, McLemore believed few retailers offered suitable accessories for women with career objectives. She struck a deal for a licensing agreement with Liz Claiborne to fill that void. Liz Claiborne Accessories would later become a full part of the Liz Claiborne brand, with McLemore serving as president.

When McLemore left the company, she carried her passion for helping women advance in their careers with her.

She points out that although women receive almost half of the country’s college degrees, there’s a gap when it comes to their boardroom presence. Take the field of law, for instance: Over 50 percent of law school graduates are women, but that proportion isn’t represented in the number of women made partner.

“Those numbers aren’t changing fast enough,” said McLemore.

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One of the reasons more women aren't in business leadership, she said, is unconscious bias which might categorize women as too fragile, or too family-orientated, to succeed in business.

“What I feel I can do is give women clothing so when they walk in the room, people will see them as a player,” she said.

The idea that the clothes might make (or break) the woman can be controversial. Shouldn’t women be judged on their merits, rather than skirt length or fashion savvy?

McLemore stands firm.

“You can’t change how the brain is wired,” she said with the certainty one might use when declaring the earth round or the sky blue.

She references a Harvard study that shows people make the decision not to hire in the first 15 seconds — because you don’t look like someone who's right for the job.

“People do make instantaneous decisions. If there is a dangerous situation, you don’t have time to think about it. You smell the smoke, you leave,” she said.

There’s also, she said, a hesitancy by men to mentor young women who dress in a manner some might find sexually provocative.

It’s important to note that McLemore doesn’t necessarily find this fair, but she wants women empowered to take agency.

Her clothing is engineered to make women look like they belong at the table, prejudices be damned.

And when it comes to helping shatter the glass ceiling, having dressed a candidate (though McLemore's designs aren’t worn by Clinton as frequently now) who could become the nation’s first female president is reaching a pretty high bar.

McLemore is just as eager to dress women dedicated to community and nonprofit work.

"What I value most about Nina is her conscience," said Martha Bergmark, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice. "She uses her work in fashion to give back in a way I admire.

It really translates not just to the women who are privileged enough to dress in Nina’s fashion, but also to the benefit of women and girls that we in our work life seek to support.

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McLemore isn’t just an ambassador for career women. She’s one for her native state, too.

“I think in general, Southerners and Mississippians have a great love of culture and place. We know we’re not as dumb as they think we are,” she said. "We know we can read and write. I make a point of telling people I’m from Mississippi."

Her career may be in full throttle, but she makes an annual pilgrimage to Hattiesburg to see her uncle Moran Pope, set to turn 94 in October.

"She told me one time that the reason she came back at least three times a year was in order to not lose her Southern accent," said Pope.

McLemore wouldn't have it any other way.

“She’s one of the best Mississippians we’ve exported,” said her friend Aubrey Lucas. “She’s just among the best. She loves Mississippi and she’s not embarrassed by her state. That doesn’t mean she approves everything we do. But she does remain very loyal and interested in her home state.”

Contact Bracey Harris at bharris2@gannett.com or 601-961-7248. Follow her on Twitter.