18 | MAY 20 • 2021 

A

fter 45 storied years, 
fashion icon Linda 
Dresner has closed 
her Birmingham boutique.
Known for her timeless 
pieces and dressing the best of 
the best of Metro Detroit (and 
beyond), Dresner, 83, felt it 
was the right opportunity to 
move on to the next chapter of 
her life.
“It was time to stop,
” she says 
a few weeks after her Linda 
Dresner boutique shut its doors 
for good. “I didn’t feel at my age 
that I wanted to renew a lease.
” 
While a difficult decision, 
Dresner explains it was a nat-
ural one that will allow her to 
spend more time with her hus-
band and children.
Yet looking back, Dresner has 
fond memories of her incredi-
ble journey in retail, which has 
also included operating a store 
at Somerset Mall in Troy for 10 
years and a store in New York 
on the luxurious Park Avenue 
for 25 years. For decades, 
Dresner has been an interna-
tional hit.
“The women were everything 

to me,
” she says of her clients. 
“They depended on me and 
wanted me to choose things 
they would wear for years and 
years, and I did that.
” 
It’s how Dresner built her 
business from the very start, by 
helping women select outfits 
that would make them feel 
beautiful inside and out. That 
was her business strategy.
She introduced new lines to 
Detroit through the decades 

such as Comme de Garcons and 
Maison Margiela, which helped 
solidify her role as a fashion 
maverick that women could 
trust. “I didn’t know exactly 
[what I was doing],
” she says 
of building her iconic brand, 

“but I always liked fashion, 
and I always wanted to choose 
things for clients they could use 
through the years.
”
It’s how Dresner curates 
her own closet, even now. If 
the clothes fit, she explains, 
they’re timeless and chic, 
despite when they were made 
or purchased. “
As long as I can 
zip them up, I still keep them,” 
she says of her own personal 
clothing collection.

Her unwavering passion for 
fashion has been an important 
part of her life since the very 
beginning. As a young girl 
growing up, Dresner would 
dress her dolls and imagine 
different scenarios for each out-

fit. “I always had a story going 
on in my mind,
” she recalls. 
“Fashion is just a thing you do 
because you have a drive for it, 
and you’re attracted to it.
”

FAMOUS CLIENTELE
Dresner’s long-running career 
also comes with its own 
remarkable stories. One mem-
ory above all that continues to 
stand out over the course of 45 
years is when former First Lady 
Jackie Kennedy would shop at 
her New York store.
“Jackie Kennedy would 
come in and she would say 
to me, ‘Do you mind if I just 
had my tuna fish sandwich in 
the dressing room?’” Dresner 
recalls. Kennedy would lounge 
in the room, watching different 
outfits being tried on. “That 
was a treat.”
Bette Midler shopped at the 
boutique as well, another one 
of many names on Dresner’s 
star-filled clientele list. “They 
all found something, and they 
all liked to shop there,” says 
Dresner, who also dressed 
many women in Metro 
Detroit’s Jewish community. 
The clothes she provided loyal 
clients were always accessible 
and comfortable.
Along with her clients, 
Dresner said she will also 
miss going on buying trips. 
“It was always hard work, but 
it was very enjoyable for me,
” 
she recalls. “It was a fantasy, 
building the look for the store 
every season. I’ll miss supplying 
women with beautiful things.
”
She says though clients are 
disappointed to hear news of 
the store’s closure, they also 
understand Dresner’s decision. 
“I’m not a young girl any-
more,” she continues. “It was 
time for me.”
Dresner might be moving on, 
but the impeccable clothes that 
she has hand-picked for her 
clients, she says, will stay with 
them forever. 

OUR COMMUNITY

Linda 
Dresner

JERRY ZOLYNSKY

Linda Dresner’s boutique 
shuttered its doors, but her 
clothes are forever.

Fashion
Maverick

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“WOMEN DEPENDED ON ME
AND WANTED ME TO CHOOSE 
THINGS THEY WOULD WEAR
FOR YEARS AND YEARS.”

— LINDA DRESNER

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