CELIA LOE: Career woman's outfitter now bakes and gyms

By the early 2000s, womenswear pioneer Celia Loe had acquired a reputation for what could delicately be called matronly design.

- Carmen Sin

Now 81 years old, retired and sporting blue eye shadow, she laughs off the charge. "Evergreen, more like," she says.

On the one hand, she did have a mature market, the natural consequence of a famously loyal customer base that aged with her brand, she says. Consider that she began in the early 1970s, working out of a backroom at home, to kit out the then-newly minted class of working girls.

As girls became women and notions of urbanity shifted, Loe had slipped from the beefy power shoulders of the late 1980s into chiffon tops and more liberated dresses.

When fans of her namesake label became mothers, she clothed their daughters too.

For the most part, she kept prices for all her labels in the affordable mid-range, rarely crossing $300. There was evening wear line Love On Earth, popular with high school prom-goers, and the pointedly younger line Additions, all cinched bodices and bright colours.

Whither dowdy? Anyhow, she is "not offended".

"(Back then) as long as I was doing well, I was okay."

It is not just the retirement zen speaking. Unlike her peers, Loe's empire died slowly.