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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“I love being here. Some years ago, I realized that I spent most of my life along Route 7. I grew up in Fairfield County, not far from Route 7. I went to Salisbury School. I went to Middlebury College, also right on Route 7. It’s this region’s geography — the whole Taconic range — that just has a hold on me, and I love it.”
Early in his career, Lane-Zucker worked in Manhattan with Orion Magazine. When the magazine outgrew its office space, he advocated for its relocation to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He then served as the founding director of The Orion Society, the nonprofit that now publishes the magazine. While there, he co-developed and coined the term “place-based education,” an approach that prioritizes local community and landscape as primary resources for learning.
He has never left the area, despite several professional opportunities.
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave this place. I had too many roots here. My kids all went to Great Barrington public schools at different points. My older son Liam went to the Salisbury School and still lives in the area and my daughter Anna went to the Waldorf School. I just love this place so much.”
Determined to forge his career here, Lane-Zucker set out on his own entrepreneurial path. He started the Triad Institute, an international think tank focused on sustainability. One of his projects was a digital media initiative called Hotfrog, which became a founding Certified B Corporation, with verified standards for social and environmental accountability.
These professional experiences and his passion for the region all come together in his work. In 2011, he coined the term “impact entrepreneur,” giving a name to the hopes and actions of a growing community of social innovators and practitioners — a new archetype of changemaker, who understands the need to reinvent the way we engage with the world through business and finance.
“Impact Entrepreneur is more than a brand or description,” Lane-Zucker said. “It is an identity that people increasingly embrace. It is who they are. The term is now widely used in the media and in conversation at every conference I go to. It is one of the great successes of this project.”
Lane-Zucker’s book celebrates the movement toward a regenerative economy and makes the case for security that rests on investments in ecological stability, public health, equity and community cohesion. He shines a light on business models and practices that marry profit with purpose and are inspired by the region’s special sense of place — this “landscape of deep memory where the earth itself seems to speak in whispers.”
He also includes 36 beautiful original watercolor images in which colors flow and form one continuous gesture. They offer a visual interpretation of the book’s call for a unified economic system in which human intention guidescomplex systems rather than dominating them.
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Lane-Zucker also sees the book, in part, as his own memoir.
“One of the things that I am happiest about is that my grandchild, if I am lucky enough to have one, or anyone, will know what I did with my work.”
Lane-Zucker is doing something new and needed — giving voice and leadership to transformative change and providing a roadmap for others to join in and take action.
As he said, “There are a lot of models and tools that exist now. This is not a pipe dream or niche thing. This is the next step; the next stage of the economy; a rightful human evolution that’s happening.”
For more information and to order a copy of the book, visit impactentrepreneur.com
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