Categories: Articles, Lil Nickelson,
Princess Jenkins has been dressing women of distinction for those special occasions in their lives for the past twenty-six years at the Brownstone located at 24 East 125th Street at the beginning of East Harlem on the 125th Street business corridor. When the Renaissance Harlem Hotel opened last year, Princess opened a second location, a gift shop on the street level of the hotel named Notable, New York located at 233 West 125th Street. She is the only woman business owner to have two functioning retail locations along 125th Street operating at the same time, one location on the east side and now one on the west side. Her business majoring college student daughter manages the new location, while Princess still holds court at The Brownstone.
Full disclosure, I am a serial shopper at The Brownstone, and have bought brooches, sequined clutch bag, signature dungaree tote, blouses, pants, and gloves. Back in 2020 I happened to express my frustration to Princess one day how I could not find a winter coat that was one hundred percent wool. By the end of the conversation, we agreed that Princess, and her tailor Omar, could make me one. I loved working with them because they included my input, and we designed a fabulous one hundred percent wool / cashmere ankle length black coat for my winter walks to Central Park and back home. I felt nothing with that coat on and I completed two million four hundred thousand steps that year thanks to my wearing that coat on my freezing weather walks.
Notable is an adjective and defined meaning worthy of attention or notice; remarkable, impressive, special, extraordinary, famous, rare, and important. Notable New York started out last year as a gift shop where hotel guests would be able to find gifts, goodies and souvenirs and get ten percent off when they showed their hotel key at the time of the purchase. The traffic for trinkets is not there; tourists are not shopping like that, so being the shrewd business owner that she is, Princess has decided to go in a whole other direction. Notable is going to be an accessories and clothing store with some gifts, and it is already paying off.
Princess has been doing a weekly broadcast titled, “Window Wednesdays,” on Instagram live where she walks around The Brownstone to highlight new colors, fashions, and accessories on display. She gets phone calls from all over the country, people love it and look forward to it; it has its own little following.
Princess also has a non-profit organization, Women in The Black New York she started more than 20 years ago that is dedicated to helping bridge the financing gap for women-owned businesses. The organization achieves this by educating African American female entrepreneurs on how to: build sustainable and scalable best-in-class companies, overcome operational challenges encountered during business growth, and prepare to secure loans or external funding to support their expansion.
