Meet Michelle Farmer of Michelle Farmer Collaborate in Palm Beach

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Farmer.

Michelle, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up traveling with my family living in places like the Philippines and Taiwan. We were always somewhere warm, by the ocean, feet in the sand and riding horses. I had always dreamed of one day being designer.

In 1993, fresh out of college I moved to the French West Indies. I ended up falling into a job working in the fine jewelry business selling Chopard and Cartier and living between st Martin and st Barth’s. After being hit by hurricane Luis, I left the islands and moved to the Hamptons in 1997. I continued to work in fine jewelry in Easthampton and started re-purposing customers vintage pieces into more wearable beautiful designs..

I then, met my husband Peter and moved to NYC living between the Hamptons and NY where I launched my jewelry collection in 2002 followed by opening a showroom in East Hampton in 2006. In 2010, my husband and I started spending time in south Florida and fell in love with West Palm and Palm Beach. We were hooked! We bought a house and he started investing in Real Estate. He purchased a gorgeous 5000-sq. foot building on palm beach as an investment property.

When I saw the space I flipped. It was perfect! I begged and pleaded to use the space as a pop up until he rented it to someone else and he said absolutely not. Finally, he agreed with the understanding I would be out in 3 months to the day. I had two weeks to renovate fill a store and open before season hit. I filled the space with fine jewelry and unique hard to find designers and the space was a hit! It was also the perfect launch pad for my long time dream of designing clothing. So, I hired a seamstress and threw myself into figuring out how to make clothing. Things moved quite fast, within 1 year we had opened two more locations, one in Bridgehampton and one at the Dorado Beach Resort, a Ritz Carlton Reserve in PR. I was also learning a ton about clothing production (the hard way) through trial and error. I figured if I could design jewelry, I could design anything. My little rag tag team of 1 seamstress and two employees grew rapidly!

Fast forward to 2017, we are busting out of the seams in the 5000-square foot building. We now have a team of managers and buyers, salespeople, seamstresses! We were sewing upstairs above the Palm Beach store. (Yes, I stayed longer than the three months, lol!) at this point, my husband had left finance and became my business partner and our CFO. We needed more space! So, we opened a sewing factory in West palm in an old warehouse space. I also wanted to be able to control the quality of our pieces.

Now 50% of what is in our stores are my designs. Gorgeous fabrics and beautiful quality are extremely important to me. We are MADE IN USA and customers are able to buy off the rack or customize their own pieces.

The other 50% is a beautifully curated collection of hard to find lux resort wear, evening and ready to wear designers from the USA, Italy, France and Brazil. We also carry artists like Sean Brannan and photographer Andy Gershon along with HelenBilt lighting and Dransfield and Ross pillows.

We opened in the cloister lobby of the Boca Resort and Club in June of 2017 followed by the International Polo Club in Wellington FL this year. Sadly, we lost our Dorado store in 2017 due to the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico, but we have plans for expansion in more locations in 2018 and 2019.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In the beginning, opening the store was an uphill battle. With no employees and zero funding, no experience in making clothing and not to mention a husband that did not want me to use his building or open a store. It’s was a huge challenge. I knew in my gut, that I was on the right path and to this day, feel it is so important to not loose faith in yourself and your vision.

Michelle Farmer Collaborate – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in hard to find lux exclusive designers in the realm of resort wear, evening, ready to wear, home, fine jewelry and accessories. Our customer is a well traveled discerning customer who appreciates luxury and the unique. We also create bespoke designs for our customers as well as evening and bridal.

We are different because we seek out designers that are new and special. We are a launch pad for amazing new brands . Many of them are European designers that are sold exclusively in our boutiques. I am most proud seeing how far we have come in such a short time. It’s exciting to see how fast the brand has taken off !

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I am living in the moment with our business, it is constantly evolving and changing I am exhilarated by what we are doing… I guess opening the factory has been the biggest thrill for me but then again the whole process has been!

Contact Info:

• Address: Palm Beach 105 North County Rd. Palm Beach FL 33480
  The Boca Resort 501 East Camino Real Boca Raton FL
  The international Polo Club Wellington FL
  Southampton 10A Jobs Lane, Southampton NY
• Website: Www.michellefarmer.com
• Phone: 561 659 4005
• Email: info@michellefarmer.com
• Instagram: Shopmfc
• Facebook: Michelle Farmer Collaborate
• Twitter: Michellefarmerb

Image Credit:
Jerry Rabinowitz, Eric Striffler, Chelsea Ann, Rory McCabe

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