Photo by Trip Burns.
Although she loved Mississippi State University and hated to leave it, Libby Story McRight knew what she needed and wanted to do.
She had worked at a locally owned store in the Delta called Gail's before starting college at MSU, and when the store owner offered her the chance to manage it, McRight seized the opportunity. Before she graduated in 2001 from Delta State University with her marketing degree, she was already managing and buying for the store.
After owner Margaret Goodman closed Gail's, McRight opened her own shop in 2004 at the same location in Greenville.
"It's evolved over time to become an eclectic mix of things for all ages," McRight says about her store, Libby Story. She describes its style as bohemian with an edgy modern twist.
McRight and her husband, John Hunter McRight, opened a Starkville location in 2007 and one in Ridgeland in 2009. Since then, they sold the Greenville store and relocated the Ridgeland location to a larger space in Renaissance at Colony Park.
"I love having the large space. It's just a playground," McRight says. She spends most of her time working on merchandising and creating distinctive displays. "That is a huge undertaking. I just got done making a skirt out of nothing but feathers," she says.
McRight strives for customers to see merchandise displayed in a new way every time they come into one of her stores.
"Otherwise, it's just stuff," she says. "To me, if it's not arranged so that when the customer sees it they understand how they need it in their life, it's just stuff, it's just clothes."
What McRight sells, however, isn't "just clothes." Her mission is to empower people and encourage them to express themselves through what they wear.
"Fashion is art, and they way that you compile the things you have on says a lot about you," she says. "And you can use that to flatter you and to tell the world different things about you. Everyone is beautiful—it's just putting things together the right way."
Over the years, Libby Story has received national attention, but McRight, 36, remains humble about it. "I just do what I do, and I work very hard," she says. "I just keep striving to impress my customers, and if I get attention from somewhere else, I thank them very much for recognizing me."
McRight also has her own handmade jewelry line, named Lenna Agnes after her great-grandmother., where she mixes odd vintage pieces with other materials such as fresh-water pearls, gemstones and brass chains.
"They're little story-telling pieces. They're timeless. They're ageless," she says. "They feel like somebody's life. It's just representative of so many things. And it's always an eclectic mix of ... things you would normally just throw away, like old zippers."
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