After 22 Summers, We Are Closing Our Island Shop. This Is the Letter I Wanted to Write You Myself.

A note from Eleanor, who started Sanibel Boutique 22 years ago, on why the doors are closing, what happens to every linen top and summer dress on the racks, and the six things I changed when I made them.

I have started this letter four times, and four times I have stopped, because I have never been very good at endings.

So let me just say it plainly. After 22 summers, we are closing our little shop on Sanibel Island and moving Sanibel Boutique fully online. The lease is ending, and after a long talk at the kitchen table with my family, we have decided not to renew it.

I am writing this myself, at the same desk where I packed our very first order back in 2004. There are boxes around me as I type. In a few weeks this desk will not be here. Before it all goes, I wanted to write to the women who kept this little shop alive, to tell you what happens next, and why everything in the summer collection is now clearing at prices we have honestly never run before.

How a little Florida shop began

In 2004 I opened a small shop a few streets back from the water. I had one frustration I could not let go of. Almost all of the summer clothing made for women our age fell into two piles. The first looked lovely on the hanger and felt like a sauna the moment the heat found you. The second felt comfortable and made you look like you had stopped trying. I never understood why a woman had to choose between the two.

So I set out to make the third pile. Summer pieces that stay cool when the heat sits heavy, that skim the body instead of clinging to it, and that are pretty enough that a stranger stops you in the grocery line to ask where you found them. That third pile is the only reason Sanibel Boutique ever existed.

In 22 summers, more than forty thousand women have worn something from this little shop. Almost every one of them found us the same way, because another woman told her to. We have 847 reviews now, sitting at 4.8 stars, and when I read them at night they nearly all say the same two things. It is the most comfortable thing I own. And it does not stick to me in the heat.

A woman named Ruth wrote to me last summer. She said she had quietly stopped buying clothes she liked, because nothing fit the way it used to, and that the Zamma was the first thing in ten years that made her feel like herself again, standing at the school gate with her grandchildren. I printed her message and pinned it above this desk. It is still there as I write to you.

The way every order has left this shop for 22 years. Wrapped by hand, with a note.

The six things I changed when I made them

People ask what makes our linen different from the tops in the mall. It is not one thing. It is six, and I argued for every one of them, usually with a supplier who wanted me to do the cheaper thing instead. Here they are, and here is what the women who wear them say.

The racks this week, slowly emptying as the orders go out and the boxes fill up.

Why everything is clearing now

Here is the part I find hardest to write. I would rather be honest with you than clever.

We are clearing one shop, not restocking it. Once the lease is up the stock has to be gone, and I would far rather it go to women who will actually wear it all summer than sit folded in a box in a storage unit. So the whole summer collection is now reduced, and when you take more than one piece the discount stacks further, up to 30 percent on top. Taken together, some of these pieces land at up to 75 percent off what they were.

I will be plain about it. At these prices, on most of these pieces, we are barely breaking even. I am not telling you that to rush you. I am telling you because it is true, and because it is the only reason a price like this exists at all. Once we hand back the keys at the end of the season, these prices go with the shop. There is no plan to bring them back.

A note a customer once sent us, trying to make sense of the price. We kept it.

I would rather these go to women who will wear them than sit in a back room while the lease runs out.

The pieces I most want to find a home for

If you are not sure where to start, start with these. The Zamma is our 100% linen V neck top, the one women ask each other about in car parks, now $59.95 from $129.95. The Kwani is the soft cotton summer dress with the real pockets, the one women tell me they wear six times in a week, now $69.95 from $179.95. Both are in the edit below, with the rest of the summer collection.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the lanai with a glass of iced tea, and you asked me whether you should order something before we close, this is what I would say.

I would tell you that summer clothing has, for a long time, been designed for women in their twenties and quietly sold to women in their sixties. I built this shop because I did not accept that comfort and looking lovely had to part ways the moment we turned fifty. For 22 years, the women who found us did not accept it either. That is the whole story.

I would tell you that the popular sizes are already thinning out, because word has started to travel since I posted this. And I would tell you that once the shop is packed, it is packed. This is the last time you will see the boutique like this.

Thank you for 22 summers. It has been the great joy of my working life.

— Eleanor