QueenBee Boutique at Tilghman Square Creates Buzz

A posh new store, promising some of Europe’s finest fashions, purses and jewelry, pays homage to three generations of women who love to dress well.

Owners Wendy Aach and her husband Mohamed Badre said they opened their first clothing store in South Whitehall’s Tilghman Square shopping center to bring “the best of Paris, Milan, Murano and Florence” to the Lehigh Valley. 

“We travel a lot and noticed it takes a long time until fashions make their way here,” said Aach, of Schnecksville.

The couple named the store the QueenBee Boutique after Aach’s mother, Jackie Mory, who Aach said “is the queen bee” of the family.

Mory runs the boutique with her son-in-law after having taught English to seniors at Allen High School for 37 years, then helping out as a receptionist at Aach’s law practice. The store also pays tribute to Mory’s mother, former city seamstress Celeste Rau.

“She had magic fingers,” Mory said. “A lot of women in the Lehigh Valley knew my mother.”

Fond of Italian leather handbags, Murano glass necklaces and dresses from exotic places such as Morocco and Costa Rica, Aach said she believes customers will swarm to the one-of-a-kind fashions she and her
husband came to appreciate in their travels. (She said her husband was in the import-export business.)

"We buy a few pieces and when it goes, it goes,” she said. “So, not everyone is walking around wearing the same thing.”

Other than the Lehigh Valley Mall and Promenade shops, there are not many high-end fashion shops in the area, she and Mory said, adding that they hope to attract students from Muhlenberg and Cedar Crest colleges when classes start in fall.

“I think we are doing really well,” Aach said of the two months QueenBee has been open. “I’ve had customers come in two and three times.”

QueenBee’s Web site, www.thequeenbeefashion.com, promotes its ware as “fashion with an International flair.”  Its owners state, “We pride ourselves in bringing to you distinctive and unique products which will make a statement wherever you go. We work hard to bring to you the most avant garde fashion trends and products at the lowest prices as we buy factory direct in order to pass the savings to you.”