Without it, rue des Martyrs-de-Vingré will never be quite the same. On July 29, Fabienne Morcillo will close her Chérie Chéri Femme boutique, which she has owned for thirty-five years. His sense of hospitality, his good humor and his banter will be missed by many.
By Loïc Todesco – 17:00 | updated at 16:19
It is an emblematic shopkeeper who is about to say goodbye to the Saint-Jacques district: on the evening of July 29, Fabienne Morcillo will close for the very last time the doors of her ready-to-wear shop Chérie Chéri Femme, which she has been running for no less than thirty-five years, at 32 rue des Martyrs-de-Vingré.
A little bubbly woman with Spanish and Sicilian origins, Fabienne is known to almost everyone. With her banter, her “Stéphanois accent to cut with a knife” (it is she who says it) and her humor, she is a real character, endearing, colorful. And without waffle.
That day, when a young man came to get a present for his girlfriend, Fabienne said to him: “It’s really a great gift you’re giving her… She’d better be nice. Or become one! A little later: “Did you see how it takes me three hours to wrap your gift? It’s just to give you time to find something else to buy…” The jokes hit home.
Hired by Alain Ballerino in 1988
Fabienne had studied graphic art. His job was offset driver. But she never exercised it. “They didn’t want a girl in a position like that at the time…” So she did another training at the CCI, “with Jacky Nercessian, who had the Madame L shop”. But it was as a bartender that she got into business, at the Olsson (today the VIP). “I didn’t even know how to open a bottle of beer, but I made the Mimard students who came there at the time laugh a lot…”
It was there that she met Alain Ballerino. “One day, we go to the bakery opposite, we both wanted the same cake. I managed to get it. He said to me: “You, you are a resourceful person, I am hiring you!”»
Became her own boss in 2014
A few months later, in September 1988, the Chérie Chéri boutique opened its doors. Its niche: high-end ready-to-wear. Over the years, Fabienne has sold brands as prestigious as Jean Paul Gaultier, Dolce & Gabbana, Castelbajac, Kenzo, Lolita Lempicka, Marithé and François Girbaud…
In thirty-five years, the shopkeeper has dressed women… Photo Loïc Todesco
Five years later, the boutique expanded to include a men’s area (which later became a boutique in its own right, Chérie Chéri Homme, just opposite). And after more than twenty-five years as an employee, Fabienne became her own boss in 2014, when Alain Ballerino offered to buy the shop.
“My clients were like a real family”
In thirty-five years, the shopkeeper has dressed women… “I have customers who have been loyal from the start. It happens that I dress three generations of the same family. My clientele comes from Saint-Étienne and its surroundings, from the Forez plain, but also a lot from Haute-Loire. I even have some who once lived in Saint-Étienne, who now live on the other side of the world and who continue to buy clothes from me, which I send them. I even dressed a whole wedding in Reunion, for example…”
For Fabienne, her clients represent “a real family”. “We told each other gossip, we cheered each other up after a heartbreak… It’s incredible, the love they gave me. I will miss it. Fabienne will also be missed in the Saint-Jacques district, that’s for sure.
“It’s going to be a kind of little mourning”
“It is thirty-five years of my life that I am burying. So inevitably, it’s going to be a kind of little mourning… Beyond the shop, it’s also going to be quite violent to leave Saint-Étienne, where I’ve always lived, ”says Fabienne Morcillo, visibly moved.
At 57, the shopkeeper has chosen to follow in Aix-en-Provence the one who has been the chosen one of her heart for six years, David Bérardier. The couple go “a bit on an adventure”: “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but that doesn’t worry me. I tell myself that love is much more difficult to find than a job…”
If Fabienne leaves her shop on July 29, Chérie Chéri Femme will reopen at the end of August, only from Thursday to Saturday. “It’s a friend, Christina, who will take over, the time that I find to sell. »
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