Ava, a high-end women’s international apparel, accessories, and shoe store has opened its doors at the former Posies location at 77 Central St. in Wellesley Square. Owner Carlos Pava, who named the store for his youngest daughter, says he is committed to offering clothes made from “classic, beautiful fabrics, with a European flair.”
The store is all cool track lighting, polished concrete floors, covet-creating window displays, and a serene palette. Ava carries dresses, pants, cardigans, pullovers, tunics, bags, and more for a woman who needs to look pulled-together all day for whatever life throws at her from an early morning meeting in Wellesley to a client dinner downtown. The Ava customer may take on a trend or two, but you would describe her as more casually elegant than trendy.
A big seller is the Kinross cashmere and wool transitional 3/4 car coat in black, priced at $962, which Pava keeps ordering and women keep buying him out of. When I stopped in, Pava himself was tending the store, and I commented to him about his almost nonexistent internet presence, despite his decades spent in the world of high-end women’s retail fashion (he and a former business partner opened a series of Tess & Carlos stores beginning in 1995 in Harvard Square, but Pava is no longer involved in those shops). He smiled and told me that was the way he liked it and politely but firmly declined my request for a picture of him in his new store. Maybe his disinterest in shameless self-promotion and Facebook likes is all part and parcel of that “European flair” thing he’s talking about.
