SAN FRANCISCO -- From selling capes and wraps to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, who was once her main squeeze, Margie Rogerson has shifted into selling high-quality gems to this city's high society crowd.
Rogerson founded Goldberry in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
She began her offbeat business by designing swirling, hooded velvet capes, including many that sold to music celebrities.
Rogerson's shop also caught the attention of San Francisco socialites and some retailers with an avant garde edge, and the merchandise eventually sold at such stores as Henri Bendel and the former I. Magnin.
After years of repeating the cape design, Rogerson got bored. Looking for a new line of business, she temporarily closed Goldberry in 1993 to travel the world, searching for high-quality gems.
In December 1995, she reopened her shop in the Presidio Heights area of San Francisco with a focus on gleaming emeralds, sapphires and rubies, and jewelry with clean, basic lines. The centerpiece of her collection is a $240,000 Colombian emerald tennis bracelet.
This energetic, diminutive San Francisco designer -- she's an inch shy of 5 feet -- sports a wiry hair style that she keeps up with a special Swiss hair gel that the manufacturer discontinued years ago. Typical of her determined, quirky style, she says she bought the last thousand jars of the stuff to insure that she'd never run out.
For years, she sported an emerald-green hair color and was known as much for her link to Bob Dylan as she was for the $2,000 capes. The 49-year-old San Francisco native said there's no longer any romantic connection to Dylan. ``I only talk to him on the phone now,'' she said during an interview at her 450-square-foot, pristine, all-white shop on the second level of 3516 Sacramento Street, near the Golden Gate Bridge.
The shop is sparsely decorated, with only a few of her infamous capes on the wall and four shelves displaying platinum jewelry. The majority of the merchandise is made of sapphires, in pastel shades of lavender, pink, champagne, crystal-clear white to blue hues. Pastel sapphire pendants are priced anywhere from $850 to $7,500. Ceylon blue sapphire earrings start at $850 and Burmese ruby earrings start at $2,250. Goldberry also has several rings, with a six Burmese ruby style selling from $12,500 to $98,900 and a six Ceylon blue sapphire version priced from $9,500. Single stone rings in platinum start at $1,500.
``The designs are simple because I design the piece around the stone. I'm basically trying to make the design complement the stone,'' she said.
The simple designs also mean that the jewelry won't go out of style, Rogerson said. ``It doesn't get tired. It's going to look the same 20 years from now. And it goes with all your clothes, not just one outfit.''
Rogerson's only employee at Goldberry is Michel Dorn, 33, her ex-husband and a distant cousin. They were married for five years during the Eighties. Dorn often accompanies Rogerson on her frequent trips to out-of-town gem dealers and also to scout out potential sites for other Goldberry locations. She's currently considering Aspen, Colo., for a second site. Rogerson's theory is that if the city is affluent enough to support a Chanel boutique, then Goldberry is also likely to thrive.
But her next step is to move Goldberry to the top floor of the three-story building. She hopes to open the new Goldberry in time for the holiday season and spend between $300,000 and $500,000 to build it.
Rogerson, in a typical burst of creativity, describes the project as a ``garden-like setting'' and says it will have a glass ceiling, allowing light to warm the environment and the jewels to sparkle.