CANANDAIGUA, NY — Michelle Yost likes to say that her new boutique is for “the mothers, the daughters and the stylish grandmas.”
The shop, Just You and Me Boutique,” located at 2375 Rochester Road, Suite 900, in Canandaigua has been open for about five months now.
But the dream behind this boutique opening has been a lifetime in the making.
Turning childhood dreams into a reality
Yost, 62, has known she wanted to open up her own boutique since she was a little girl growing up in Newark, New York. It all started when her mother began taking her to go shopping at a local place, Backstreet Boutique. She fell in love with all of the unique and different items the store had to offer, she said.
This boutique planted the seed that flowered into her lifelong dream of having a shop to call her own. Yost got her degree in retail management and worked in the business for 25 years, she said. She loved the work, but she still yearned for a boutique of her own.
When Yost and her husband, Charlie, became empty-nesters seven years ago, the couple decided it was finally time to follow Yost’s dreams.
“I’m like, ‘Well, what do you want to do now?’ And he goes, ‘Well, I don’t know, it’s just you and me,’ and I go, ‘That’s it, just you and me boutique,’ and that’s how the pop-up started,” Yost said.
Charlie, who is now retired, was enlisted in the military at the time and always traveling, so Just You and Me Boutique was first born as a pop-up shop where Yost could sell her items while traveling with her husband. With a rolling rack of clothes and a few accessory items to lay out on tables, Yost and her husband began selling their products on the road and in hotel lobbies, she said.
This past April, Yost said everything fell into place and the couple was finally able to turn their pop-up shop into the real brick-and-mortar boutique she had always dreamed of.
A boutique for the mothers, the daughters and the stylish grandmas
Just You and Me Boutique is primarily a women’s clothing store, but it also offers an array of gifts and accessories for all to enjoy, according to Yost.
Clothing sizes range from small to 3X and include name brands like, Annie Wear, Liverpool and Judy Blue. In February, Yost said the boutique will begin carrying Tribal, another name-brand clothing company. The shop also carries handmade jewelry, accessories, gifts and Christian-themed jewelry and gifts.
Along with offering a wide variety of products, Yost said a percentage of all of her sales is given to the Mary Kay Ash Foundation, which raises and distributes money to cancer research for cancers affecting women and to organizations that work to end domestic and gendered violence against women. Yost worked for Mary Kay for 25 years and was always inspired by the foundation, she said.
“I have found a really different sense of joy with this, in that everything that is in the store I have picked myself,” Yost said. “I really think about things before I purchase them. I think about my customers and it’s working.”
“I’ve always been women-driven,” Yost said. “I just love helping women, I love making a difference in women’s lives and that was just a way for me to give back.”
The boutique is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Yost said they plan to hold a formal open house to celebrate the boutique’s opening in spring 2025.
For more information about the boutique, its merchandise and store hours, visit https://justyouandmeboutique.com/.
— Madison Scott is a journalist with the Democrat and Chronicle who edited our Weld Street Project and also did reporting for it. She has an interest in how the system helps or doesn’t help families with missing loved ones. She can be reached at MDScott@gannett.com.
