The Woman Behind the Dress: Meet Eleanor

July 28, 2016 | Filed in: Humans of MM

Here at MM.LaFleur, we name our dresses after the brilliant employees who make this company great. The namesake of our Eleanor dress is Eleanor Combs, our whip-smart manager of financial planning and analysis. She joined us straight out of Harvard two and a half years ago, and has subsequently helped bulletproof our budgets as we’ve grown exponentially. (Many of us have no idea how she does it, but Eleanor makes uncanny predictions of sales and revenue growth that are pretty much on the nose every time. She might be a sorceress—or is just really good at her job.)

As for her namesake dress: Eleanor didn’t pick it herself—she was probably too busy looking into the future—but she says it’s a good fit. “It’s professional and a little bit conservative, but there’s a fun side to it,” she says. “You can wear it to the office, but then you can also wear it out. I once wore it three days in a row while working at a pop-up store, and I also wore it to have dinner with my dad.” The elegant A-line, which features a sophisticated twist at the collarbone and subtle ruching at the waist, debuted in our spring 2015 collection; for its 2.0 version, we loosened the bust and tweaked the neckline based on customer feedback.

Eleanor Combs in the Eleanor 2.0 dress in midnight blue.

One more fun fact: Eleanor (the person) recently took a much-deserved “vacation” to backpack through South America—which entailed such frigid conditions that she had to spoon with her friend at night while they both wore down coats. She left her Eleanor dress at home, for understandable reasons.