Sylene lingerie boutique closes - The Washington Post
Behind almost every state dinner appearance, prom picture or performance at the Kennedy Center, there is a bra perfectly tailored to the occasion. For 45 years, a Washington-area boutique has served as a one-stop undergarment shop for the D.C. elite and its breast cancer survivors.
But on Saturday, to the dismay of its loyal customers, Sylene of Washington will close its doors for the final time.
“The whole thing is very emotional,” said Cyla Weiner, who co-owns the boutique with her sister, Helen Kestler. “But at this point in our lives, we are both ready for a second act.”
It is rare for any independent lingerie store to have flourished through generations of evolving beauty standards and gender norms. Giants like Victoria’s Secret crumbled under the shift from hypersexuality to body positivity and face competition from new brands marketing inclusion and confidence. But Sylene has always sold lingerie as a tool for self-love, even in the days when it stocked bullet bras and hosted “men’s nights” with an open bar for those shopping for their significant others.
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When Sylene first opened in 1975, the sisters say, it was rare for a woman to talk about purchasing her own lingerie. It was even more unusual for a woman who had undergone treatment for breast cancer to feel empowered when shopping for intimate apparel. Weiner and Kestler didn’t know it then, but the culture they would foster on an unremarkable block in Bethesda (and then near Friendship Heights, when they moved locations years later) would act as a place of quiet resistance to the culture of shame around female sexuality, attracting customers including first lady Nancy Reagan and newscaster Connie Chung.
“When you have lived in Washington, you know Sylene,” Chung said. “Cyla and Helen have always had the best selection in the city and, I soon discovered, in the country.”
Born in Germany and raised in New Jersey, Weiner and Kestler grew up helping their parents, who were Holocaust survivors, run their own lingerie boutique. Among lace and wire, the sisters spent their childhoods watching women explore the most vulnerable and intimate aspects of their bodies. Sometimes they would see women break down and cry in the middle of the store.
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“It made such an impression on me,” Weiner said, standing half a century later in her own bright and airy store, dressed in a leopard print shirt that matched her thick-framed glasses.
Most of the shoppers who cried during fittings, Weiner later learned, were recovering from radical mastectomies, or surgeries that remove an entire breast to treat breast cancer. The women were struggling to come to terms with their new physique, and Weiner and her sister saw firsthand how lingerie could ease that process when customized appropriately.
So years later, when a young Weiner was tired of working as a substitute teacher, she turned back to her roots and sought training on how to fit undergarments for mastectomy patients. She opened Sylene on a hot August day in 1975. Five years later, she hired her sister.
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They spent days just feet apart, with Weiner poring over numbers and style trends in the back office and Kestler working with customers in the front of the shop. Somehow, they never tired of each other’s company.
One evening after an eight-hour shift together, Weiner remembers calling her sister just to chat.
“My husband said, ‘What is possibly left to talk about?’” Weiner recalled.
“Everything!” Kestler chimed in.
“Exactly.”
Over the course of a decade, the sisters worked together to put on fashion shows for women who had undergone breast surgery each year, drawing crowds and local media. They stopped the events when lumpectomies, which remove only a part of the breast, became the standard treatment for breast cancer.
“It became like a sisterhood in the store,” Weiner said. “At a time when it was very hush-hush to have a radical mastectomy, the store provided an outlet.”
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By the time Nancy Reagan had her mastectomy in 1987, Sylene was famous for its work with breast cancer survivors. Weiner traveled to the White House private quarters that year to fit the first lady, who was preparing to attend a state dinner.
“She was nervous about how she would look and that people would stare at her,” said Weiner, who would travel to the White House several more times to fit Reagan. “I told her that she would look great and not to worry. She was just like any other woman.”
While Sylene is known as a haven for breast cancer survivors, it was also made popular for its handpicked selection of undergarments, almost entirely curated by Weiner. Her eye for style and fit hooked her clientele and evolved with them as times changed.
“Women are a lot more independent and secure than they were many years ago,” Kestler said, recalling when women regularly wore slips. “They don’t feel dependent on a man to make them feel good, and they don’t need an occasion to make them buy something that they want or love.”
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More than the quality of their product, Weiner and Kestler want their store to be remembered for the community it nurtured.
“You basically felt that no matter what you needed, they would find it for you,” said Amy Kauffman, a 57-year-old who shopped at Sylene for more than 25 years. “They knew how to make you look better, and they knew how to flatter you.”
Like many Sylene regulars, Kauffman first went to Sylene to shop for herself but returned years later with her daughter. It was common for Weiner and Kestler to fit undergarments for a client’s prom dress, wedding gown and maternity wardrobe.
They also formed special relationships with some of the city’s most high-profile residents, traveling to the Kennedy Center to see client performances and Smithsonians to see client designs. The sisters became so essential to Chung that she would ask them to FedEx undergarments if she was sent away on a reporting trip and needed a quick outfit change.
“They have always had a good understanding of a woman’s body and how to enhance it in a way that you can’t see,” Chung said. “They came up with all kinds of ideas, seriously, that were sneaky smart.”
The end of the boutique’s long tenure came as a shock to its customers, who immediately called, emailed and showed up at the store demanding answers. But there was no eureka moment, no epic sister fight, not even financial strife caused by a pandemic, the women said.
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Their lease was nearing its end, and Weiner and Kestler figured it was time to either move locations or close shop. They decided they were simply ready to turn the page and spend more time with their grandchildren on the West Coast.
And so, like almost every other decision they had made, the sisters leaped together. On Sept. 3, they announced they would close their doors.
The sisters have been working overtime to fulfill the orders that poured in following their announcement. They say they will work until every order is filled, including for those like Chung, who ordered what seemed like a lifetime supply of undergarments.
“We do this because it’s fun. But after 45 years, we need a break,” Weiner said. “And this isn’t to say we won’t ever come back. We will just see how it goes.”
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