NILES — A new Niles business is ready to offer high-quality clothing and tailoring services to the community.

Mimi’s Tailoring Dress Store, 117 N. Second St., opened its doors to the community in October and is looking forward to the new year. The store, owned by Niles resident Noemi Garcia, is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and offers tailoring and alteration services, dresses and accessories for events and occasions including prom, quinceañeras, weddings, baptisms, pageants and more. The building was formerly home to Lupita’s Dresses. 

Garcia, who has been tailoring for years, decided to pursue a brick and mortar location for her business. After months of no luck with finding a store front, a fateful encounter with former Lupita’s Dresses owner Lupita Tejeda led to Garcia taking over the lease and purchasing the dresses and accessories from Tejeda to start Mimi’s Tailoring Dress Store.

“[Lupita] closed the store and took everything to her basement because nobody wanted to keep the store,” Garcia said. “She was looking for somebody to take the display cases and since I planned to open a store one day, I came for the display cases. She started telling me about the store and how she had everything in her basement and I was like, maybe this is it? So I bought the dresses from her and started the store.”

Garcia said business was good initially and expects to be busy again this spring with proms, communions, baptisms and quinceañeras, which are celebrations of a girl’s 15th birthday.

“Hopefully this is a good year,” Garcia said. “I’m excited to finally have a store of my own.”