When Madeline Grayson, September Votta, and Jocelyn Gailliot launched Tuckernuck in 2012, they never expected to create a dress so buzzy that The Washington Post called it “the dress that swept Capitol Hill.” And yet when the local brand first launched the “Jackie”—a simple tweed shift dress inspired by Jackie Kennedy—in July 2022, it sold out within 48 hours.
Two years later, Tuckernuck’s “Jackie” dress is a favorite among women in politics, spotted on current and former Hill staffers; as well as the likes of former White House Press Secretary and Fox News anchor Dana Perino and Elee Reeves, wife of Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves.
The “Jackie” has definitely been a highlight for the brand, but the DC-based retailer has had steady success since its launch over a decade ago—first as an online boutique, then, in 2016, with a brick-and-mortar in Georgetown, and in 2019, with its own eponymous label, which includes the popular dress. Though that label wasn’t a goal of theirs initially, Votta says, “the time came because we were very familiar with the market, our customer, and what they wanted.”
One of their business building blocks, Grayson says, is finding and filling gaps in the market. “We’re always trying to speak to the customer and what she’s doing,” Grayson says. “And we’ve found along the way that if we desire something and we’re having a hard time finding it, the customer also feels that way.”
Today, the online site carries 300 brands at any given time, along with their own clothes, home, and jewelry labels. The goal wasn’t just about curating clothes, it was about creating the “Tuckernuck lifestyle,” as Votta puts it.
The company takes inspiration from seaside towns (they currently have a collaboration with Nantucket Reds) and European travel. The results have been a hit with on-the-go women in metropolitan cities—their largest markets are in New York and Texas. Votta says they owe much of their success to their DC roots. “We joke that DC is very much like the North-meets-the-South so we’ve been able to tap into how people are dressing nationally.”
Grayson and Votta suspect that functionality is behind the “Jackie” dress’s wide appeal. Its precursor was their “Francoise” dress, a ’60s-style mod shift dress.
“Shift dresses can fit multiple body types, and [they’re] easy and timeless,” Votta says. “We [asked], how can we reinvent it for the working woman?”
For inspiration, they looked to Jackie O, whose style transcended the White House. Grayson refers to the dress style as “conservative cocktail,” which resonates particularly with the DC politico crowd, bouncing from office work to high-profile events.
“It really made us realize how important it is to offer that type of day-to-night, classic-with-a-twist product to our customers,” she says.
In recent years, the label has also benefited from the “quiet luxury” trend, which runs along the same vein of Tuckernuck’s own modern yet timeless aesthetic with logo-less designs that are still easily spotted by those in the know.
They’re regularly expanding—in 2023, they added a pickleball-inspired collection to their athleisure label, Tnuck Sport, in response to the sport’s growing popularity—but say they don’t rely on current fads to fuel their future.
