Mother Lode

There’s a lot to be said for keeping it all in the family! Every day is Take Your Daughter to Work Day for these mother-daughter teams who cherish the quality time they spend together—whether at work or at play.

Whimsy Boutique

1033 S. Charles St., 410-234-0204

Jennifer Solomon was visiting her mom, Patty Pearson, in Tulsa, OK, in 2007 when they joked that it would be fun to open a dress shop together.

“It was a total pipe dream,” says Solomon.

Neither had any retail background: Pearson was working as a administrative assistant in the office of then Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor. Solomon was a technical writer. But less than a year later, Pearson had moved to Maryland, and what started on a whim, became Federal Hill’s Whimsy Boutique. The two complement each other to a tee. “I’m more of the headstrong bossy type,” says Solomon. “I’m a people person,” says Pearson. “As my mother used to say a real ‘Chatty Patty.’ We are the perfect blend.”

L’Apparenza

6080 Falls Rd., 410-372-0350

In the early ’80s, when Nancy Lattmann ran Stuff and Stuff clothing boutique, her older daughter Barbie would help out around the store, and her little one, also named Nancy, took naps behind the counter. Thirty-two years later, all three women, along with Lattmann’s other daughter, Debbie Marshall, and her granddaughter, Alexa, preside over their adorable Lake Falls Village dress shop L’Apparenza.

“This is our home away from home,” says the elder Lattmann. Notes daughter Nancy: “In a way, it’s more than home.” “Because we’re all together!” adds Barbie.

Even Alexa’s younger brother, Brent, has gotten in on the act. Reports Alexa, “For prom, he brought his date to get a dress here. He was the one who helped her pick it out.”

Treasure House Accessories

9163 Reisterstown Rd., Owings Mills, 410-363-4110

Years ago, Jodi Brodie was a handbag buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue and her mother, Rhona Rosengarden, was a retail veteran with her own accessories boutique in Old Pikesville. “I stopped working when my kids were little,” says Brodie, “but I said to my mother, ‘You have to move your store. My contemporaries are not going to that area of town.’” By 2004, the duo ended up opening the Owings Mills-based Treasure House Accessories together. “At first, she would call me by a pet name at New York trade shows,” says Brodie, laughing. “It was mortifying.”

Seven years later, sums up Rosengarden, “It’s a marriage made in heaven.”