Our Mission

studio1851 strives to create, educate, and collaborate to offer a collection of unique products that not only excite our diverse customer, but also challenge us to give back. Through choosing vendors that share our values of supporting our environment and those who live in it, we hope to show our community about the importance of sustainability and Fair Trade initiatives. While working with local businesses and artists, many of whom give to a cause, we continue to learn about the industry and gain valuable experience in both strategic decision making and running a retail business.

About Us

studio1851 is a retail business run by students from Lasell University's School of Fashion, located in Newton, Massachusetts. Everyone who is part of the studio1851 team brings strong business skills, creativity, and fresh ideas to the table. Years of hard work and dedication have finally given this team a physical location on campus and their goals only get bigger from there. 

studio1851 has been involved with many collaborations on campus. One of which, Graphic Design League, has been a huge help in the process of developing our visual work. They helped to create our logo, and promotional posters and contributed their own advice to our team's design work. studio1851 is always looking to do more collaborations with others on our campus and in our community whatever that may entail.

Our retail business is still small and in the works, so stay tuned for what's in store...

Meet the Team

studio1851 started as an assignment in a Retail Operations course at Lasell University. Students were challenged with coming up with a new concept for retail, and they presented their idea of Boutique1851, a student run retail store on campus. Boutique1851 would be an opportunity to sell student made designs and other curated product to the community, while offering the fashion students an opportunity for connected learning to gain industry experience and test concepts they were learning in the classroom. With increased support from Lasell University, the plans to turn the idea into a course formed. Tees and sweatshirts with student designed graphics were created, Boutique1851 was renamed studio1851, and the first pop up shop took place at the December Symposium in 2017. During the following semesters, students researched and planned for the procurement of new merchandise and the successful execution of numerous popups.

After 2 years of continuously increasing sales, the request for a physical location was finally approved. Students then took on the challenge of creating a retail space out of a classroom, and with very limited funding, built shelves from excess wood and cinderblocks and worked with local retailers to donate additional fixtures. A sign was designed and assembled by the students, a rug and chandelier were chosen, a display case was designed and built, and new product
was brought in to prepare for the November 2019 Opening Celebration. The new studio1851 store is located in Winslow Hall of Lasell University, located in Newton, Massachusetts. As of September 2020, studio1851 is officially omnichannel with the addition of our website and online shopping. In October, we launched shipping, so now customers from across the U.S. can shop studio style!

studio1851 intends to continue building on the work the prior students have accomplished each semester. We will expand our product offerings and continue to challenge ourselves to be true to our mission of sustainability, giving back and on-going education. We will look for opportunities to support and unite our Lasell Community and beyond, by becoming a platform to promote and celebrate the talents of new and aspiring artists and entrepreneurs through both our social media efforts and our instore visual displays. We will continue the testing of our skill and concepts of operational management, sales, marketing and merchandising. studio1851 hopes to grow through building partnerships and relationships across campus and majors, and collaborating on important projects that support our mission, all the while offering creative and exciting product to our customer.