by Lizzie Stricklin

Starr Osborne, owner of Tailored Transitions, a home-staging service based in Glenside, has recently expanded her services to include retail with the opening of the Tailored Home boutique and bridal registry at 8528 Germantown Ave.

In addition to supplying popular bridal registry items, such as china and other place settings, the shop also features furniture, bed and bath linens and more home items. This seems to be the fruition of much of Osborne’s career – according to her, “All roads led to where I am now.”

“I’d always wanted to be an interior designer – that had been my dream from the start,” she said. “[My career] was all leading to it in sort of a roundabout way.”

Although this is her first time branching out into the retail market, Osborne is no stranger to home transitions and furnishings. With a B.A. in the history of art, Osborne spent many years working for  Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses in New York before opening her own public relations firm. After moving to Philadelphia and taking time off to raise her three children, Osborne decided to break into the home staging scene.

“Home staging was new, and I thought, ‘This is really exciting,’ so I came into it that way,” Osborne said. “We were one of the first companies in Philadelphia in home staging and … it just branched out from there. And is just a great, new foray for us.”

Created in 2004, Tailored Transitions provides services in home staging, moving management and interior design, allowing clients to mix and match these services as they please.

“Many times people hire us for two or three of those. Sometimes they’re just three projects in one style of industry, but often we overlap and mix, and I think is just an extension of that,” Osborne explained. “I think we’re just broadening our interior design and I think it also branches into moving management.”

The focus on helping clients move into new homes is certainly evident in Tailored Home as well as Tailored Transitions. The store features brands such as Mottahedeh, Richard Ginori and Juliska, with all items carefully curated to provide what Osborne described as “the best of the best and the most unusual” merchandise.

When hoping to expand her business, Osborne said this personalized attention to the client and dedication to providing the best possible service helped her choose to expand into a new area of business rather than move Tailored Transitions to new locations.

“At first I thought about expanding into other locations, but then we couldn’t keep our personal touch on it in the way that we really feel is important to what we do,” she said. “And so by going broader and offering more to do with the home, which was sort of a natural extension of our interior design anyway, the retail seemed like a way we could grow our business and yet keep that personal touch. We really feel that even though this is a retail store, this is really a service business, and our clients are ideally lifelong clients who know us and we know them.”

Chestnut Hill was, therefore, the ideal location to open this small business. A Chestnut Hill resident herself, Osborne said that “It just felt like a really good fit.”

“There aren’t many places anywhere where you have this village atmosphere that is part of a big city,” she added.

Having opened its doors on Saturday, the boutique has the only bridal registry in Chestnut Hill. According to Osborne, there is a special need in Chestnut Hill for the personal touch that a boutique such as Tailored Home provides.

“I think much rather come to a small store like this that’s in their neighborhood,” she said, contrasting Tailored Home with large department stores that provide a bridal registry. “They can register here, go to one of our great restaurants for lunch, maybe get their invitations at Paperia in the afternoon, talk to Robertson’s about flowers. It’s more of a community feel, and I think people are looking for that.”

Shoppers can now visit and peruse Tailored Home on Germantown Avenue even before the grand opening, which is planned for Sept.15. Osborne looks forward past the opening to the holiday season in the fall and winter, and confessed, “I just think the whole thing is going to be so much fun getting set up, and having our first bride register will be really fun, too.”

Whether shoppers are hoping to get a jump start on their wedding registry, or simply find some chic items to spice up their home, the doors are now open at Tailored Home, where the staff aspires to make customers and clients feel right at home.

Tailored Home is at 8528 Germantown Ave. Phone: 267-297-6502.