MILLERTON — The Millerton News would like to officially welcome its newest part-time reporter and photojournalist, Arvolyn Hill, to its team. Hill will be covering the village of Millbrook and town of Washington. Hill was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and her family moved to Kent, Conn., when she was a child. “My dad told me when living in Brooklyn that my mother and he threw a dart on a map. It landed in Kent and that’s how we ended up here,” said Hill. She attended Kent Center School and then Rumsey Hall School for seven years. She graduated from Canterbury Preparatory High school in 2007. “Spending the majority of my childhood in private school was an interesting experience in ways that I am still discovering today,” she said. Hill moved to Madison, N. J., in the fall of 2007 to start her first year at Drew University. She was a member of the cross-country team her first semester, continuing a running career that started at Rumsey Hall through Canterbury. At Drew University, Hill majored in Pan-African studies with a minor in English and writing. After enrolling in a handful of poetry workshops, she began to develop poetry as her main craft of writing. In 2009 she received Honorable Mention for the Academy of Poetry Prize and was a winner of the universitywide Arts of Respect Competition for her collection of poems. In her junior year, Hill decided to study abroad in South Africa. She was accepted into an International Seminar Abroad studying activist writing during Apartheid with 12 other students and two professors. The seminar included two weeks in Cape Town and another two in Johannesburg, meeting with poets, writers, musicians and activists. After her seminar was completed, Hill started another program in Cape Town, where she studied at the University of Cape Town for five months. “I knew that I wanted to stay longer than a month so I enrolled in another program with 53 other Americans for the semester,” Hill said. She describes this semester as the best time of her life. During her time in Cape Town she traveled the outskirts of Cape Town, stayed in a township, went on safari, attended “Afrikaburn,” South Africa’s version of Burning Man, and jumped the world’s highest bungee jump. “I feel incredibly fortunate to have studied abroad in South Africa; Cape Town is rich with life and culture and everyone should have the pleasure of visiting that amazing country,” she said. Hill returned to Drew her senior year, where she started to grow interested in journalism. She began writing for The Acorn, Drew University’s newspaper. “I always thought the creative aspect of writing that I loved was separate from journalism, until my professor showed me that creative writing is essential for journalism,” said Hill. After becoming involved with The Acorn, Hill wanted to continue working in journalism. She graduated from Drew University this spring and is now thrilled to become a part of The Millerton News team. “The opportunity to work for The Millerton News came at a perfect time,” she said. “I am able to do what I enjoy most — writing and photography — right in my own backyard.”
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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