SHE`S SO SKIRT!SHE`S SO SKIRT!
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She`s So Skirt!
By Boston Skirt, Thursday, March 11, 2010, 0 comments

Every tween and teen girl wants to have the coolest clothes and be the trendiest student walking down the school halls. With unique and personally designed clothes from Marblehead mom Sarah McIlroy's Fashion Playtes, fashionistas in training can create their very own one of a kind t-shirts, jackets, leggings and other accessories through the innovative and easy-to-use site.

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She`s So Skirt!
By emily.holden, Monday, October 26, 2009, 0 comments
The Hip-Hop Mamas are so Skirt!

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She`s So Skirt!
By jacqueline1485, Thursday, August 27, 2009, 0 comments
Vera Bradley's 100th Birthday-Skirt! meets Barbara Bradley Baekgaard

Vera Bradley's 100th Birthday
Interview with Co-owner and daughter Barbara Bradley Baekgaard.
Thursday August 6th, 2009

Skirt! Boston: How did the Vera Bradley Company Start?
Barbara: The company started in my basement actually, I borrowed $250 from my husband.  Within our first year I had made $10,000 on my Vera Bradley Bags. At the time I had two girls in college sand started making bags for them, well their friends loved them as well as their friends mothers and the idea took off.  Within five years I had hit the $3 million mark.

Skirt! Boston: Did you go to college for design?
Barbara: Well I went to college in New York, Marymount, but I went for Sociology not Design.

Skirt! Boston: How did you come up with the name Vera Bradley?
Barbara: I got the name from my biggest inspiratin my mother, Veronica “Vera” Bradley.

Skirt! Boston: What would you tell other women you get inspiration from you and your amazing success story?
Barbara: I would tell them that if you have an idea to run with it.  Don't think twice just go with it like I did.

Skirt! Boston: Has the line ever ventured into the clothing side?

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She`s So Skirt!
By jacqueline1485, Thursday, July 30, 2009, 3 comments
Alexa Frongillo and Alexis Katinas, Role Models

As part of the curriculum at the Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School (BFCCPS), students in eighth grade are required to complete a "capstone" project - a community service project. Two students have partnered up with Franklin Soccer School to hold a free, indoor, summer soccer camp for children with special needs during the week of August 3-6 at Carpe Diem Field, Franklin.  The program is based on having fun and playing the world's favorite game, soccer!

Skirt! interviewed 13-year-old Alexa Frongillo and her best friend, Alexis Katinas. Meet two young teenagers behind the free soccer camp from Aug. 3 - 6 in Franklin.

Skirt!: How did you come up with the idea for the camp?

Frongillo: Growing up we have both played soccer and have participated in many camps. We wanted to teach kids with special needs because they usually don't get this opportunity.

Skirt!: Why do you girls want to help others less fortunate?

Katinas: These children are just like us, we all have something we can't do very well. No one is perfect. Helping people brings smiles to both the helper and the person getting the help.

Skirt!: What message do you want to get across to other kids who want to help people in the community?

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She`s So Skirt!
By hkempski, Thursday, June 11, 2009, 0 comments
Barbara, a Roxbury resident and associate minister at Greater Love Tabernacle Church

 

“Rev. Barbara Ann Dulin is a 28-year breast cancer survivor and achiever. She mastered single parenting and is the loving matriarch of four generations. She has achieved scholastic success and is now an associate minister; mentor, vice president for Sisters International, and CEO of a business.”
–         Clarise Spriggs
 
Barbara, a Roxbury resident and associate minister at Greater Love Tabernacle Church, raised three children while getting a Master’s Degree at Cambridge College. She’s been a social worker, a travel agent, and leader in Sisters International, a faith-based fellowship and networking group. Along with writing a book about her trials and triumphs, she runs Business Not As Usual consulting, to help individuals and organizations increase creativity and profitability.
 
“I want to encourage women to continue to get their mammograms and screening,” she says. “I’m proof there’s life after breast cancer. With all of the high tech we have now, there’s no reason women are dying.”
 

Photo by Janet Casey

 

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She`s So Skirt!
By Skirt.com, Tuesday, June 2, 2009, 1 comments
Paulette McElwain, Visionary

Paulette is my Shero because she creates a supportive, even loving, atmosphere for patients at the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, many of whom lack health insurance. After sending a nurse to "hold my hand" during my IUD placement, she distracted my boyfriend (who’d paled two shades in the waiting room) with a guided tour.  
~Nominated by Joia Wood, Charlottesville , Va.

 
Spurred by the growing need for women’s health services, Paulette launched a $4.6 million campaign for VLPP’s new facility, opened last month at 201 N. Hamilton. “Access to affordable family planning often means, quite literally, the difference between a woman finishing college or not,” Paulette, VLPP’s President and CEO, notes.  On weekends she hits the Goochland countryside with her horse, Splash.

 

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She`s So Skirt!
By Angelia, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 0 comments
Christine and Laurel Koh

Christine was on track for her Ph.D. and a life as an academic, teaching and studying music and the brain, when her car jumped the rails. A combination of a difficult work environment and the realization that time with baby daughter Laurel was precious put the brakes on her career. She detoured, launching bostonmamas.com, a lifeline for local parents, and a graphic design business, poshpeacock.com.

“Having Laurel at home changed my priorities a lot,” says Christine “I’ve been an instinctive person all along and this felt like the right move.”

Laurel says, “We go to the library every week and get a ton of books, like Dora the Explorer, and I help mom with her artwork and baking.”

Boston moms
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She`s So Skirt!
By Angelia, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 0 comments
Elissa and Harper

Two cooler, more creative women would be hard to find. Elissa was the second woman hired at Montserrat College of Art, and remains there as a professor of illustration. Harper, her daughter, is a custom clothing designer and costumer who was wardrobe supervisor for the David Letterman Show. They joined forces just over a year ago with the combined SEAMS shop and Elissa Della Piana Gallery, on Main St. in Wenham.
 
“Harper has been doing embroidery from almost age 3,” says Elissa. “By Kindergarten, she was demonstrating for show and tell. For us, art is everything and everywhere. We’re not pursuing the cutting edge, we’re about living with art and making it part of our lifestyle.”
 
“I grew up in a house full of books and costumes and fun people. I didn’t know it was unusual. Elissa was a superfeminist. If a question was about creating art, the answer was ‘yes’,” says Harper.

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She`s So Skirt!
By Angelia, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 0 comments
Debi and Ruth Bramson

It's easy to imagine Ruth raising three girls as a single working mom. While she was creating leadership opportunities for women in the companies where she worked (like Shaw’s and National Grid), serving on the Mass. Commission on the Status of Women, and starting the nonprofit Suited for Success, her daughters absorbed the message that they are capable of anything. Debi followed her star to work in the federal government, to Harvard Business School, and to a career in marketing.

“Whenever there was a question or a fear that I couldn’t do something, she was there saying ‘of course you can.’ Her total and absolute certainty really empowered me to get it done and do it well,” says Debi.

“I believe people need the opportunity to be as good as they can be,” says Ruth, now CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Mass. “We need to give girls tools and values so the choices they make are the right ones.”

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Thursday, March 26, 2009, 0 comments
Krushpuppy/Jammer

A little more than two years ago, Karen Conant didn't know that roller derby existed. But now the graphic artist from Gloucester is rolling up and down the Eastern Seaboard on the Boston Massacre team, zipping around her opponents in fishnet stockings and ruffled athletic shorts.

"People say, 'I can't believe you're doing this!' but it's definitely good for getting out any internal frustrations in a safe and dramatic way," she says.

The flat-track games, held locally at Shriner's Auditorium in Wilmington, draw as many as 1,600 fans for a double-header. Krush likens her role to "a human hockey puck," because she gets shot around the track, trying to pass opponents and score points for her team.

She also tries to stay on her wheels, which isn't always possible when eight menacing members of the opposing team are hungry to knock her off. "I've had a few injuries," she says. "Nothing major, but a lot of bruises."

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Thursday, March 26, 2009, 0 comments
Dana Goldstein Schaeffer, Wheelie Cool

Dana’s relationship with motor vehicles was established back in the 1980s when she blew the transmission on her ‘82 LeBaron while racing a TransAm on Revere Beach Parkway.

She blew that transmission a few more times before graduating to other vehicles. Then she married a guy whose business was hot rods. Five years ago, they opened Chop Shop Custom Hot Rods in Woburn together.

She’s not tricking out cars in the shop, she says. “I can tell a street rod from a muscle car, but I'm not into engines, I like the artistic side.”

Rather than racing or dabbling under the hood, Dana is involved in legislation to keep the hobby legal and viable through the SEMA Action Network. And she's going to be driving a '60 Olds (when it's done). You know, the kind with the “12-person trunk.”

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Thursday, March 26, 2009, 0 comments
Robin Chase, Matchmaker

It seemed Robin had already revolutionized the way we get around by co-founding the Zipcar method of auto sharing. Yet now that we can Zip in 13 cities including London, Toronto and Atlanta, she’s asking us to take a giant leap forward again by joining GoLoco (goloco.com), a ride sharing network.

It’s all about slowing climate change, she says. “Transportation is 20 percent of the country’s CO2 production. So, if we want to do something about it, the car is the fastest, biggest and best place to look in terms of alternatives.”

While admitting she’s in an uphill battle, she hopes to get people to think of travel differently. “It’s so much more fun thinking about going with people. Travel is all about relationships.”

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 0 comments
Kristine Lilly/Anchor

She’s an Olympic gold medalist and 20-year veteran of the US National Soccer Team, and a mom with a soccer academy business. So, what does Kristine Lilly have to prove?

As one of the first players named to the Boston Breakers professional women’s soccer team, people look to her to bring fans back to games (the first league was shuttered in 2003), and to be a role model for new moms (her daughter, Sidney, will be 9 months old around the time of the team’s first game on April 11).

"I lead by example more than anything," she says. "We’ll have a new group who mostly haven’t played together. I’m hopeful that we’ll have a bunch of leaders. I’m just trying to do whatever I can to make the team great."

Oh, then there are the throngs of elementary- and middle-school girls who will be watching, and wearing her number. "You want the young girls to see, to know that the possibility of playing professionally exists out there," she says.

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 0 comments
Sheriff Andrea Cabral/Nonstop
In order to gauge the temperature of the hot seat Andrea Cabral occupies as Suffolk County sheriff, it’s important to keep these numbers in mind: she’s the first female to hold the elected position in the county’s nearly 400-year history; about 3,000 inmates, detainees and employees are under her supervision daily; she’s responsible for a $130 million annual budget; the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department is one of the 30 largest in the country, and Cabral puts in 60 hour workweeks.

"I’m accustomed to the nature of things here," she says. "What seems chaotic from the outside is normal for us."

And there are rewards: Cabral enjoys speaking to students in Boston schools and supporting programs, like City Year, that will keep more of them in school and away from her department.

"I have moments when the enormity of the problems become overwhelming, but I have to come back to ‘do what you can do.’ I have to do that a lot."

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 0 comments
Marjorie Druker/Soup Sommelier

She’s been at it 14 years now, stirring massive vats of homemade soups, overseeing the quality of the vegetables and rice, and admonishing customers to eat well. Marjorie is the driving force behind the New England Soup Factory, serving 800 people a day exactly the sort of high-quality ingredients that she feeds her own family.

It’s hot in Marjorie’s kitchen. While stirring the pots, she’s developing a new location, keeping an eye on the hip new chefs in town, and always improving upon what she’s been doing all these years.

"Inspiration is the most essential ingredient in every recipe," she says. "Every day I try to reach beyond the status quo. When you work for yourself you don’t have anyone pushing you, you have to push yourself."

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, January 26, 2009, 1 comments
Julie and Sue
This is one of those relationships that took a while to click: Julie Burke, a high school English teacher, and Sue Kila, an EMT, met through friends more than two years ago but didn’t start dating until last summer. They hang out together, watching DVDs, and visit places like 647 Tremont (in photo) when possible. A return trip to Provincetown for Memorial Day Weekend is already in their plans.

Julie: “She’s super laid-back, and I’m not. She’s incredibly kind while I tend to be judgemental. I think we balance one another out. It just seems natural and easy.”

Sue: “Julie isn’t controlling, but she’s organized and always ready to go. It feels natural to be with her. She gets me, and a lot of people don’t.”

Boston
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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, January 26, 2009, 0 comments
Jenny and Arun

It would be tough to find a couple busier than Arun Ramappa, an orthopedic doctor, and Jenny Johnson, producer of NECN’s TV Diner show. We lured them to Picco in the South End with an ice cream sundae, and heard about their joint resolution to cook more at home in 2009 rather than eating out. Food—of any sort—is one of their shared passions.


Jenny: “I love how Arun is very curious about the world.
It’s inspiring to me and keeps me very engaged asking questions and being thoughtful in a way I never was before.”


Arun: “Jenny has such a genuine spirit. She’s always uplifting to be around. She inspires me to be better.
And, it’s fun to date someone who likes to eat as much as I do.”

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, January 26, 2009, 1 comments
Rachael and Jamal
Working at the same financial services company brought Jamal Nelson and Rachael Despres together, but the partnership was cemented when Rachael showed Jamal her jewelry-making skills. With his encouragement, Rachael left the office, and both eventually dived into the jewelry business full time, creating Lawyer Marie designs that are sold at the Atrium and Prudential Center malls.



Jamal: “We each have our own design styles, but the business is our two designs coming together.”

Rachael: “We're very competitive, and that makes it fun. The competition is always improving us.”
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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, January 26, 2009, 0 comments
Audrey and Frank
Audrey Paek, a recruiter of nonprofit fundraising professionals, and Frank Miranda, who runs a video production company, were professionally acquainted for several years before getting married in ’01. Now they share their passion for helping others, particularly through the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence, working together on the organization's annual gala. They live with a very well behaved golden lab, Putt, in the South End.



Frank: "I liked her attitude, the way she looked at life. She's always upbeat. She gets passionate about stuff and I find it very sexy."

Audrey: "He has wit, a great sense of humor. That's important, but he also has incredible compassion for people and causes. We're great as individuals but much better together."
Boston
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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 0 comments
Kazuko Matsusaka/Virtuoso

A Brookline resident, Kazuko has played viola with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 17 years.

True or false?

1. "I am a scratch golfer."

2. "My passion is therapeutic horseback riding, which I do every weekend."

3. "I breezed through college in three years."

 

Answers:

1. False. Kazuko was always required to protect her musician’s hands, which limited her athletic pursuits somewhat.

 

2. True, and to an amazing degree: After every Thursday afternoon concert, Kazuko says she jumps in her car and drives to the Berkshires, where her thoroughbred horse, Dublin, and leased palomino pony, Birdie are kept. Until she is required to return to the symphony, Kazuko stays in Western Mass., helping children and adults with therapeutic horseback riding. She even  took several months’ leave from the symphony to pursue hippotheraphy, the second passion in her life. See horsepower.org for more information.

 

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 0 comments
Nicole Dalyrimple/Scavenger

A transplant from DC and New York, Nikki worked on a variety of television shows and documentaries before launching her second career as owner of the interior design boutique Acquire in the North End.

True or False:

"I once had to find a ‘mouse wrangler’ to stage a scene with hundreds of mice in a cave for a show about a serial killer."

"I have a terrible fear of flying, so of course I ended up in a Navy jet landing on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean – and we missed the landing the first time around."

"When researching a show about the Old West, I had to learn bull-riding."

Answers:

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 0 comments
Ruth Harriet Jacobs
A proud octogenarian and a familiar face around Wellesley, Ruth is a founding member of the Red Hat Society and author of several books on women and aging, including Be An Outrageous Older Woman.

True or False:

"I was once the most-kissed woman in America."

"I continue to teach college-level sociology."

"I interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt for a Boston newspaper."



Answers:

1. True: during World War II, Ruth was a young newspaper reporter in Boston who greeted troop ships when they arrived in port. Thrilled to be home, soldiers and sailors would often plant big wet kisses on her because she was the first American woman they’d seen in months or years. Multiply the kisses by the number of ships and you’ll know why she waited by the docks – for interviews, of course!

2. False: Although Ruth still lectures for Wellesley College’s Centers on Women, she retired several years ago (she had taught sociology at Boston University for 14 years and chaired Clark University’s sociology department after earning her bachelor’s degree at age 40). To find out when she’s speaking at Wellesley, check wcwonline.org or watch the skirt! calendar.
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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, November 24, 2008, 0 comments
Shayna Yasuhara/Sketcher

Call her Shayna Shenanigans because this artist plays with your imagination, making fuzzy animals, clown masks, balloons, everyday appliances and scary flowers both playful and eerie, the way a coat rack can take on an absolutely horrifying human form in the dark. It’s her way of sending viewers on their own adventures in art. Shayna’s work has been featured by Urban Outfitters, the adidas Originals store and the SXSW Music Festival. She is a founder of the Paint Pens in Purses events, which showcase female artwork.

"I resolve …
… for most of my existence I wished I could just disappear into my own imagination … my resolution for this year is to share this world with whoever is along for the ride! I’ll prove to you that there is a cartoon character in every cloud and crinkled piece of paper, making this world more like my dream world."

 

Meet Shayna and other female artists at the next Pain Pens in Purses event, Dec. 11 at Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge (see www.myspace.com/paintpensinpurses).

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, November 24, 2008, 0 comments
Mel Robbins/Success Coach

Tucked in a tiny soundbooth above the escalators in downtown Boston's Borders Bookstore, Mel holds forth on anything listeners to her Make It Happen With Mel radio show serve up, with side orders of rapid-fire wit and insight. All on live radio. "Sometimes I think, 'holy shit, should I say that?' but I try not to impose my own sense of morality, because they have to live with the result," she says.

"I resolve…
…to find and execute the man – because it had to be a man – who coined the phrase ‘work-life balance’ that sent all of us women into a tailspin, trying to juggle everything…"

 Mel’s show streams live on Borders.com and is available on podcasts. Get an earful!


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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, November 24, 2008, 0 comments
Joyce Jellison/wordpimp
Yup, that's her own term: wordpimp. "I'm taking words to the street," says Joyce, a former newspaper reporter and Army soldier who can be found selling her own books of poems in Coolidge Corner and Harvard Square when she's not doing readings. She's also taking words to the kids, teaching poetry in a Waltham middle school. This is a pivotal time for Joyce to ponder resolutions, as she turns 40 in 2009.

"I resolve …

Resolve
That place
separating
Probable and improbable
The faint negotiating point between tangible and intangible

We manipulate time
In order to rearrange discontent
Move it into another corner of the room like worn furniture
But only temporarily

This year
I will become weightless
Having stepped outside of my skin
Shaking the dust from past lovers from my spirit
Before I reenter
I will wash secrets
From my dreadlocks
Causing memory to blur and time to slow

Resolution
The fragile home of good intentions…"

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, October 27, 2008, 0 comments
Pam Washek/Angel

Many people talk about “paying it forward” but Pam could write instructions for actually doing so.

Friends and neighbors took care of her family when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, and when she recovered she was determined that the network of help and good works shouldn't end. That's when she started the first of the local Angel Networks, which has grown virally to encompass 14 communities.

“Eighty percent of what we do is cooking, because it helps families in these tragic situations to maintain a sense of normalcy, and that helps to keep families together.”

Early next year, Pam expects to take the Angel Network national, employing computer software that allows members to sign up to make one meal or a dozen.

“There’s no shortage of people who want to do something like this.”

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, October 27, 2008, 0 comments
Tori Stuart/Pro-Health


Her business could have been sneakers or lip balm.

Tori didn't set out to make a better granola, she wanted to create a business to make a difference in peoples’ lives. Then she stumbled upon her mother's habit of eating granola to ease perimenopause symptoms. Hoping to aid middle-aged women, Tori developed Zoe's Foods, a line of cereal and snack bars made of wholesome ingredients.

"When I was developing the formula, I'd cook up these little batches on my stove, finishing at midnight. Then I'd drive them around the corner to my friend’s house and leave them in her mailbox to try for breakfast,” she says. Ten years later, the products are in hundreds of markets and letters pour in from fans.

“I do not believe in a magic bullet, but I feel this can be a catalyst for change. It can get people onto the path to making more positive changes in their lives,” she says.

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Monday, October 27, 2008, 0 comments
Trena Costello/Temptress

There are plenty of celebrity chefs in Boston, but only one whom women universally envy: Trena Costello.

She's the pastry chef who creates the room full of decadent treats at the Langham Hotel's chocolate buffet, which has soothed breakups and taken the edge off PMS flare-ups for 20 years.

A native of Seattle, Trena is as adventuresome in life as she is with chocolate, having taught English in Japan and “chucked” her former career at a Chicago college to attend pastry school just three years ago. In Boston, she is making her mark by inventing mouthwatering treats that can be shared by fellow Celiac disease sufferers and vegans alike.

“When you eat chocolate, there’s a chemical reaction in your brain that equates it with happiness and love. I don’t know if women have more reactions than men do but we certainly appreciate it more,” she says.

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Thursday, September 25, 2008, 1 comments
Morgan First/Trailblazer

A magnetic personality, bubbly enthusiasm and a creative streak a mile wide make Morgan First, founder of Map Boston, an entrepreneur to watch.

She was backpacking through Europe using the Let's Go guide when she was inspired to create her own guide to Boston. The result is a handy, functional calendar/planner with neighborhood maps and tidbits on cool restaurants, stores (like Jamaica Plain's Salmagundi, where she's pictured).

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She`s So Skirt!
By skirtboston, Thursday, September 25, 2008, 0 comments
Laura and Claudia/Designing Women

Call them garments or costumes or even clothing – just don't write off Laura Kane and Claudia Parent's designs as mere whimsy.

These Framingham State College Fashion Design and Retailing students are serious about creativity. Laura, right, favors bright, fun clothing and costumes for anime fans, worked for toy maker Hasbro, and sees a future in the engineering end of the industry. Claudia, left, had a fashion epiphany in Italy, has worked for TJX and plans to sell her own styles to boutiques soon.

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