Nancy Talbot Dies at 89

Nancy Talbot, who worked with her husband to build a single store into a retail giant and mail-order company, has died. An obituary in The New York Times said Talbot was 89 and passed away in Boulder, Colo.

The Talbots chain created by Nancy Talbot and her husband, Rudolf, started with a single locale — including a signature red door — in Hingham, Mass., and now has 587 stores and annual revenues of nearly $1.5 billion. (Rudolf Talbot died in 1987.)

According to the Times, Nancy Talbot, “a product of the Shipley School and Radcliffe, applied her patrician good taste and enthusiasm for bright colors to merchandising well-made, affordable, preppy fashions to postwar American women. The look was classic rather than current, chiefly intended for the customer whom Women’s Wear Daily once called 'the country club woman.'”