The Armani suits hang pristinely in the front window of Ruth Shaw. Sarah, the willful dachshund, stands guard by the Donna Karan hose. And fashion patter echoes through the room: That bias skirt makes you look smaller. ... I don't think it's dowdy, but you need a strappy sandal. ... You look fabulous.

The owner of this namesake store smooths the cashmere, pleased that so many black tunics have sold. To her, it's vindication: The fashion magazines that proclaimed "black is out" were wrong.

"When black dies, we're all going to be dead," she says with a laugh.

There are those who predicted her own demise as well. But for 25 years, Ruth Shaw has given high fashion a home in Baltimore, remaining true to her belief that glorious designer clothes - including $700 cashmere sweaters - have a place in a town where the wealthy often wear the same elbow-patched cardigan for decades.

She believed, and she made others believe. She put Jean-Paul Gaultier's tutu skirts in the window of her Cross Keys store. She asked jaw-dropping amounts for clothes. And she stayed, while chic retailers, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nan Duskin, came and went.

In a brutal business where a bad season can ruin a shop, she kept going. And longevity matters, even if she refuses to give in to much reflection as she marks a quarter-century in business this month.

"I'm not the sort of person who looks back," she says. "I don't even look too much forward. I sort of prefer to see what's now."

The present is a good thing. She's got a knowledgeable sales team (buyer-manager Ray Mitchener has been with her for 20 years), an established name and well-earned respect.

"She has one of the best 'better specialty' stores out there," says Barbra Musial, the vice president of sales and marketing for celebrated New York milliner Eric Javits. "That's a reflection of her, without a doubt. She makes a very strong statement in terms of her identity, who she wants to be in the marketplace. She and her staff are in sync. They all work together. In this day and age, that's unusual."

If the staff has stayed, so have customers - some of whom she's dressed since the store opened. On this September afternoon, a group of well-heeled women give her a warm greeting and later walk out clutching white shopping bags with discreet gray stripes and red lettering, a status symbol in this town.

As for the woman whose name is on those bags, she's equal parts doyenne, businesswoman and straight shooter. Mention a fashion-related subject - from anchorwomen to Washington style men's taste - and she's ready with an often acerbic insight.

"The way women anchors on television are dressed is just disgusting," she says. "That happens to be primarily the fault of the station. They have decided women don't look good unless they are wearing bright colors. ... How can you take an anchorwoman seriously? She gets on and says, 'Well, the market fell 200 points today,' and she's wearing turquoise with stones all over it."

Or this:

"Washington is a fashion wasteland. ... Most of the fashionable people are foreigners and they go back to Europe to buy their clothes. The rest of them are from Kansas. They look like they're wearing housedresses most of the time. Or they have a friend in the State Department who bought a piece of fabric somewhere, and the dressmaker made it up and it belongs on a sofa."

Men as shopping companions?

"First of all, I have nothing against husbands. You have to live with them, but the truth is, men mostly don't have a sense of style. They don't get it. I've been married twice. I never asked my husband what I should wear or how I should wear it. I was the one who was wearing it. It was, 'Do I feel good in this?' "

This strong, elegant woman with gray hair, silver jewelry and a black Piazza Sempione ensemble isn't hot and bothered as she speaks. There's candor, not venom, in her tone.

"She's very opinionated, but she's also very kind and generous," says interior designer Rita St. Clair, a long-time friend and customer. "You get to a time in your life where you say what you feel and you don't think about it. ... It's 'What you see is what you get.' "

Before opening the store in 1973, Shaw, who grew up in Washington, dabbled in other careers: She sold furniture, acted as press secretary for U.S. Sen. Joseph Tydings and created a line of tennis clothing.

From manufacturing, the switch to retail was natural. Her first season, she carried Cacharel tweed pants, sweaters and printed shirts in dark green, bordeaux and chocolate. She had feather jackets made in New York to wear with them. It was a shockingly new concept for daytime dress in Baltimore, but it sold. And Shaw was on her way.

Sally Jones, owner of Jones & Jones in Cross Keys, has known Shaw since she opened and calls her approach to retail gutsy.

"When she went into business, she decided she was going for the best, the top, and she's stayed with it," says Jones, whose business is across from Shaw's. "There were times when her store looked half-empty, but her stuff is expensive. That's where the gutsiness came from."

Shaw has a sharp eye for fashion and a knack for picking who's going to be the next hot designer. She bought lines - including Dolce & Gabbana, Iceberg and Donna Karan - before they hit big nationally. And she's also cultivated a vast network of retail and designer friends with whom she trades tips. (In addition to her home in Mount Washington, she maintains an apartment in New York.)

But if she's often hit, she's also missed. She laughs about the season some 15 years ago when she bought English designer Rifat Ozbeck, who favored Edwardian looks. "It has the distinction of probably the only line I've bought where we did not sell one piece," she says. "It became an inside joke in the store."

Yet she compares fashion to one of the few sports she enjoys: baseball. In that game as well as her profession, she says you don't need a hit every time. Go three out of 10 and you're a success.

"Anyone who expects to be 100 percent right in the retail business is an idiot," she says.

"When I'm going to take a flier on something, I'll say, 'How much am I invested? If I can buy $5,000 at cost, which would be around $10,000 in my store at retail, can I afford that loss? Can I afford to do it to show people what might be next year?' ... If I can buy $5,000, I'll say sure. But if that company says you have to buy $50,000, I would pass. That's business."

As important as understanding business is, understanding women is also critical. She's been known to open on Sundays for women with emergencies, such as the hotel guest whose luggage was lost.

Sales associate Stephen Tancibok takes clothes to the home of a customer who prefers not to shop in the store. And when Shaw is buying, she sometimes selects clothes with specific customers in mind.

That strong connection with the public has helped her outlast many other exclusive stores in the area.

Rene Daniel, president of the Daniel Group, a Baltimore-based shopping center consulting company, says, "The independent higher-priced women's shop is slowly a fading memory. The reason for that is it's an awful lot of work. You really have to kowtow. ... At Ruth Shaw there's a tremendous interest in their own customer and in satisfying the needs of that customer. People don't go there to shop. They go there to buy."

Shaw was turned off by an experience at Saks Fifth Avenue in Owings Mills years ago.

"Barbara Mikulski is a dear friend of mine," she says. "She obviously can't shop in this store. She doesn't have the body to wear our clothes. Our people don't even make her size. So in trying to help her, I thought, 'We'll go to Saks.' I walked around and picked out things that I thought could work on her body. ... The saleswoman started bringing things in the dressing room. In her wildest dreams, Barbara couldn't wear those clothes - these little straight knitted things. If Barbara had put on those things, she would have been in tears. The only thing this salesperson was interested in was making a sale. ... She didn't know her stuff."

But Shaw has her own rule of thumb about offering opinions as to how customers look in clothes. If it's someone new, she doesn't comment unless asked. If it's a regular and something isn't working, she'll say: "I really think you can look better than that."

She's only half-joking when she says she doesn't want older women as shoppers. "They're a pain. ... They come in and say, 'Don't you remember when it was $29.99?' "

Those days are long gone. Sweaters now range from $100 to $1,000; suits begin at $500, and evening dresses average between $300 and $3,000. "We have a lot of professional women as customers - lawyers, doctors. I'm not going to kid you, we're not a store for secretaries," she says.

She acknowledges that some women are intimidated by her store, even those who shop in the complex. But she says it's often because they haven't been inside.

Her success has meant trade-offs in her personal life. "My first marriage was a big mistake. I was very young. ... My second marriage, I don't know. I can't say there's been a personal cost in that sense. Everything is a matter of choices. I like what I do. I also have to recognize the fact that I'm a person who really likes being alone."

And yet she describes her greatest accomplishment as her two married sons, five grandchildren and her efforts to be a good person to family and friends.

"That's something that goes on," she says. "When we're talking about business, we're talking about something that people have to do to eat, to have a roof over their head. You do it the best way you know how. And it has been very rewarding. I have to say I'm blessed. I've been able to do something I enjoy. For my whole working life, when I got up in the morning, I wanted to go to work."

Pub Date: 9/13/98