WINSTED — The 2011 Laurel Festival is less than a month away, and organizers are getting creative with their fundraising by hosting a Laurel Festival Car Wash at the Winsted Ambulance Barn on Main Street.The car wash scheduled for Saturday, May 14, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (rain date Sunday, May 15) will feature this year’s contestants soaping up vehicles and sponging them off for donations to the Laurel Festival Scholarship Fund.“We’re praying for good weather,” Laurel City Commission Chairman Tracie Colabella said Tuesday. “We’ll have contestants washing cars at the ambulance barn and on the same day we’re going to continue our laurel plant sale with the Friends of Main Street.”Colabella said 2-gallon laurel plants are on sale for $25 each and proceeds will be split between the commission and Friends of Main Street.The festival itself runs June 10, 11 and 12 at locations throughout the Laurel City, including a Friday night kickoff party at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Marshall Street, a Saturday night formal ball at Crystal Peak and the annual Laurel Festival Parade on Sunday, followed by the crowning of the new Laurel Queen in East End Park.Seventeen candidates have registered for this year’s festival, consisting of girls mostly from The Gilbert School, with one from the Explorations Charter School and one from Northwestern Regional High School. “We initially had 10 girls from Northwestern but most of them ended up dropping out,” Colabella said.New this year will be a vendor fair Sunday at East End Park. Vendors have been invited to sell arts and crafts, jewelry and other items before and after the parade, which steps off at 2 p.m. Local scouting troops and nonprofit organizations are expected to attend.“We’re really excited about the vendors at the park because we’re trying to get more businesses involved in the festival and get more people to come downtown,” Colabella said. “Next year we’re hoping to make it a bigger event on Sunday, with music and bouncy houses. We want to make it an all-day event.”Vendors who wish to rent a space in the park will be charged $25 per booth. Colabella noted that the town has waived additional fees. Space is available on a first-come, first-served basis by calling Elaine Williams at 860-379-0063 or Robin Diorio at 860-738-8711. The Laurel City Commission teamed up with the Winsted Elks Lodge last month to kick off the festival season with a Laurel Tea on April 3. The commission also held a fundraiser April 20 at Chili’s in Avon, where a portion of proceeds from meals went to the Laurel Scholarship Fund.This weekend’s car wash will be an opportunity to meet this year’s Laurel Festival candidates while giving the car a good bath and/or purchasing a laurel plant. Stop at the Winsted Ambulance Barn Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., or Sunday if it rains, and show your support.
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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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