With its concentration of top-flight designers and models, New York is the epicenter of the runway world. But Boston’s much smaller scene has prospered over the years thanks to catalog work, commercials, and department store print advertising. Trichon’s agency capitalized on those opportunities, and, as Internet retailers such as Rue La La proliferated, helped local models land online work as well.
Trichon helped launch the modeling careers of Tea Leoni, Keisha Whitaker (nee Nash), Victoria Rowell, and, rather infamously, a young Scott Brown. (The senator’s daughter Arianna has also worked with Maggie Inc.) Close friends call her a mix of Bette Midler and Mae West. A savvy business woman with a bawdy sense of humor, she has a reputation for being everyone’s Jewish mother.
“She’s an icon in Boston, especially in the fashion world,’’ says salon owner Mario Russo. “As long as I’ve been here, she’s had this very strong presence. You just don’t mess with Maggie.’’
But after running her eponymous agency for 30 years and, in the past decade, beating back cancer, Trichon announced last week that she’s stepping aside and handing the business off to her longtime protege, Robert Casey, who simply goes by Casey.
“I would have worked until 100 if I could have,’’ says the 65-year-old Brookline resident. “But after six bouts of cancer, there are a lot of side effects from the treatments and the medications that I’m on. It was time.’’
It’s a dramatic shift for a driven entrepreneur who first came to Boston during the Vietnam-era to help a friend burn draft cards and bras. Trichon proudly talks of never taking a vacation and working seven days a week. She’s a self-made woman who claims her high school education consisted of cutting classes every day and regularly taking the train to New York to see Broadway shows.
