She Loves Giving Her Customers a Sense of Closure
Shirley Savoy isn’t sure when she first became aware of her somewhat unusual talent. But she can tell you exactly when she became known as “the Button Lady.”
It was February 1990 and Savoy had just left her job as manager of a dry cleaner to run the button department at F & S Fabrics, a Westside store that sells fabrics and trims to everyone from home sewers to Hollywood costumers.
“The minute I came here, people started bringing me their clothing and I just instinctively picked the right button out for them,” recalls Savoy, whose workday is spent behind a glass-topped counter, pulling boxes of buttons--plastic, metal, horn, tortoise shell--from a vast wall of buttons.
Before customers learned her name, they began asking for “the Button Lady.”
“Anything people wanna know, they always come to Shirley,” says Savoy, a Southerner with a larger-than-life personality and theatrical mannerisms to match. They also ask her advice about fabrics and trims.
Born to Native American parents--her mother, a Cherokee, died giving birth to Shirley; her father, a member of Louisiana’s Natchitoches tribe, died when she was 5--Savoy was reared in Opelousas, La., by foster parents.
They gave her the movie starlet name. While as a child she may have dreamed of stardom (as well as of careers in fashion, interior design or medicine), Savoy is happy to have found her calling pushing buttons.
“I know buttons,” she says, running her hands over her perfectly coiffed and sprayed wavy brown hair. “And it’s the same with everything I do. No matter what it is, I must say I’m perfect at it.”
“I’m a little more of a realist, but I won’t argue with her about that,” says F & S owner Louis Woznicki. He was so impressed that Savoy, who then managed the Golden Glo cleaners a few doors down on Pico Boulevard, could remember which cleaning was his without a claim ticket that he hired her away.
Savoy, Woznicki says, has “become quite well renowned in our world here. She’s always upbeat and people tend to gravitate toward her. And she has a great knack for putting together the right button with the right outfit.”
That knowledge might have come from her years working at the dry cleaner. But Savoy thinks “it comes from within. I was born with it. I didn’t need any training because I was already trained.”
Even on a busy Saturday afternoon, with customers two and three deep at the counter, Savoy works her magic one on one. For someone needing to replace a gold crest button on a classic wool blazer, Savoy instinctively goes to a quarter-size button with a tiny anchor motif. When the customer thinks it “isn’t quite right,” Savoy becomes her most persuasive.
“Yes, honey, this is very nice, very nice,” she says. “It really is perfect. You have the gold there and it matches the details in your suit. It’s very nice.” The customer buys the button.
Sales representatives bring buttons from all over the world to F & S. The finest, Savoy says, come from France and Italy. But you won’t find over-the-counter Chanel buttons, for example--to ensure that rip-offs don’t wind up on Kmart costumes, couturiers and high-end design houses trademark their button designs. Savoy’s true gift is her unerring eye for the just right button--whether it’s an oversized $59 rhinestone accent for a chiffon wrap skirt or a 40-cent plastic replacement for a white cotton dress shirt.
She worked with wardrobers for the upcoming film “Titanic” and has helped find buttons for police uniforms for “NYPD Blue” and a doctor’s coat for “Chicago Hope.”
Over seven years, Savoy has more than mastered the store’s massive inventory, which ranges from $10 buttons in the shape of a chair, a kangaroo, a banana or a starburst to one-of-a-kind antique pearl buttons costing $120 each.
Watching Savoy select a button is not unlike observing a psychic at work. “I really choose the button from the person,” she says.
“And she never fails,” says Ann Dickinson, a home sewer from Santa Monica. “Whatever Shirley picks the first time, it’s always what you want.”
Savoy explains that a button’s color should complement, not detract from, the garment. Blacks, for example, must match. “Some buttons are too black, others are not black enough; some are gray / black, some are off-black.” Some buttons are casual; others scream dressy.
Savoy has several out-of-state customers who order buttons by phone and, though she’s never met them, Savoy swears that by voice alone she “can almost describe the kind of person they are and the kind of buttons they need without even seeing their clothing. I work from the inside. That’s the only way to choose a button.”
