Toby Lerner passes the baton

After spending two days in New York consulting for Gilmar, a Milan-based sportswear company, Toby Lerner sits cross-legged in her art-filled Center City living room, drinking tea.

"This is the happiest I've been," said Lerner, 63, dressed in a simple embroidered shirt and slacks. "I'm buying for Boyd's now. I'm working on a line of bags. . . . What I'm doing is limitless."

At one time, Lerner owned three boutiques, sitting at the center of the region's high-end fashion world for more than 30 years. In its heyday, Toby Lerner was the go-to place for 1980s career women; the name was synonymous with Philadelphia fashion, much as Joan Shepp or Ann Gidder are today.

Her story is an example of how circumstance affects what we buy and who sells it - and how, in fashion, the taste of one person can carry wide influence.

"If you weren't going to Saks, or you weren't going to Nan Duskin, you were shopping at Toby Lerner," said Sandra Blumberg, a longtime customer and owner of Blumberg & Harris, a Philadelphia-based art consulting firm.

"Toby was about good clothing. She brought in European designers and created looks for people that were unusual. She was on the cutting edge."

Lerner, who grew up in Overbrook Park, worked in medical research and taught preschool before opening her first store in 1973 on 20th and Chestnut Street. The reason was simple: She was always into fashion.

The store was a more casual boutique that almost immediately became a hot spot for hippie types searching for the latest in T-shirts and jeans. While the clothing was expensive, the style was relaxed, and the store had a friendly feel. Customers felt at home.

In 1981, Lerner closed that store and opened one at 17th and Sansom Streets, with partner Trish Thompson. The hippies were growing up. European lines such as Giorgio Armani and Piazza Sempione, along with American favorite Calvin Klein, ruled the closets.

"The more European designers I could get, the better," said Ann Gidder, owner of another longtime Center City boutique, Knit Wit. "We watched the store grow up. It got more serious. Dressier. . . ."

Lerner added a store in Suburban Square in 1984, and in the mid-1990s, she opened one in Manayunk. But styles were becoming more casual. Manayunk customers proved to be more Banana Republic-mall-specialty-store-types than high-fashion seekers. The store tanked. Thompson and Lerner split.

"It was a tough time. That store sucked money out of my other stores," she said.

Enter Diane Beloff - wife of a former city councilman convicted of conspiring with a mob boss to extort $1 million from a local developer - a longtime shopper. Lerner and Beloff struck up a friendship, and Beloff decided to invest money to keep the other stores from sinking.

In 1999, Beloff took over the remaining two stores, although Lerner stipulated in their contract that if and when she left to pursue other interests, she'd take her name with her.

"My name was important to me," she said.

Although she had given up ownership, Lerner stayed on to run the stores for seven years after Beloff was diagnosed with breast cancer. In that time, fashion went through another overhaul, becoming a celebrity game driven by Internet traffic. Sex and the City set the standards that urged women to mix high end and low end. Jeans started doing double duty as casual and dressy pieces.

"I started buying more Theory, more Jimmy Choo," Lerner said, laughing.

Lerner finally left in August after Beloff got a clean bill of health.

Beloff is continuing Lerner's legacy, although not with the same name. She closed the Center City store in 2002 and in October merged the Suburban Square operation into a 3,000-square-foot boutique in Haverford, and changed the name to Diane Beloff.

"I saw this as an opportunity to take the store in a new direction," Beloff, 47, said in a separate interview. "It's almost unheard of that when you buy a company, you don't buy a name."

Much like Lerner, Beloff caters to well-off women who want exactly what European designers such as Gabrielle Strehle Strenesse and Angela Missoni put on the runways.

Next to these classically tailored pieces are more whimsical fashions, such as a black pleated tiered dress from Moschino or a flowing blouse from Lela Rose.

"We are still trying to fill the need of the Toby Lerner core customer," Beloff said, her gray patterned tights a sharp contrast to a black pencil skirt and an Etro jacket.

"But we are also trying to appeal to a much larger market."

In the way of a true boutique, only one or two of each item hangs on the racks, which are color-coordinated in a classic kind of way.

Canvas sandals from Valentino line a table. Wolford tights hang on the wall. Strenesse pleated skirts and Charles Chang coatdresses are draped on mannequins.

Trend watchers believe that 2007 will mark yet another cusp of fashion change, with dressier clothing on the rise. Beloff's store looks ahead of the curve: Jeans are not on the walls. (The only jeans she carries are by designers. Last year, they included Chloe, Piazza Sempione and René Lazar.) There are no T-shirts, and suits are overflowing with gathers, tucks and button details.

But in a move to stay accessible, Beloff - with the help of her daughter, Lauren, 27 - is trying to carry larger sizes. In the fashion world, that means up to a size 12.

"I want to shed the myth that our store only carries clothes for women who are smaller than a size 6," she said.

It will be a while before Diane Beloff is synonymous with fashion, but she's off to a good start.

Across town, Lerner is giddy. Now that she's not running a store, she has time to read palms and travel to Ireland with her husband.

Her keen fashion eye is evident in the lines she brought to Boyd's third floor of contemporary fashions this spring - Milly, Theory, Diane Von Furstenberg, Ellie Tahari.

"I have a lot of admiration for someone who has been in the business for a long time and can stand the test of time," said Kent Gushner, vice president of sales at Boyds. "The fact that she is around and has survived is a testament to her abilities."

The line of luxury crocodile, deer and snakeskin purses Lerner is working on with an Italian-based handbag-maker will be available next fall.

Once you have the eye, you always have the eye.

"It was time to let go, change my life," Lerner said. "But fashion is about change and I will never leave the world . . . ever."