Flashback: When Ruth’s Lingerie Took Over Best of Rhode Island

Dear [Rhode Island Monthly Publisher] Mr.  Palumbo,  

With great interest I read The Long and Winding Road from the August 2024 edition of Rhode Island Monthly. In your fourth paragraph you mention “…a lingerie shop dressed two of their young models in their “closest-to-PG” attire and had them stroll through the event.” 

Ruth’s Lingerie was that store. We celebrate our seventieth year in business this year. Some say we are now a Rhode Island institution. But by now you know how that goes. We may no longer have models exhibiting our wares, but we are definitely alive and well.  

Courtesy of Carol Schwebel

But now for my backstory. Ruth’s Lingerie was founded in the spring of 1954 by my mother Ruth Andelman Lubinsky. It was post-World War II. In that era almost all shopping was located in downtown Providence. But Ruth’s was established in Cranston, a suburb, in hopes that placing a store where the young women lived would be good for an intimate apparel business.  

Economically those post-war years were good for most people. But my father’s textile waste business was floundering. He suggested that my mother try something and that perhaps that could steady our family finances. And that’s what she did. Our first store signs (which hang behind our sales counter) say Ruth’s Corset Shop — a throwback to a past way of life. My grandmother would come to RI to help my mother out — she was our store’s seamstress. I was eight years old and not one bit happy. Mothers in the 1950s didn’t work. They were expected to be home baking cookies and taking care of their families. It wasn’t until I reached adulthood did I realize how strong, resilient, and able my mother was. She was a woman ahead of her times and quite a lady. My mother always said it took about five years before the store was actually accruing income. But she was always able to pay her bills, keep a smile on her face, and continue to efficiently run our family household. I was still a teenager and a freshman in college when my father suddenly passed away. It was now the 1960s and I was a student at Antioch College in Ohio — during its heydays. I later graduated from New York University — with my mother insisting she could pay the tuition and I was not to worry. And in spite of my protests, she did. With resilience, Ruth’s Lingerie thrived and my mother was always able to take care of her own needs. She passed away at 83 having worked that day.  

Photo by Tabitha Pereira

And my story continues. I married my Antioch boyfriend and after his graduate school years in New Haven together we moved to Columbus, Ohio where he was a University professor. Our children were raised in Columbus but we certainly made yearly trips back to Rhode Island. I was 50 years old when my husband passed away. Our two children were in college. Like my mother Ruth, I was widowed young and with college tuitions to contend with. I had lost both my mother and my husband within a year in the mid-1990s. I had also inherited Ruth’s Lingerie. While I couldn’t wait to leave Rhode Island as an eighteen-year-old, I embraced my return as a 50-year-old. While my return preceded your arrival in Rhode Island, it wasn’t by much.  

As an adult, I saw Rhode Island in new ways. I loved its diversity, its smallness, its rich cultural heritage, and its people. I began to feel at home. And every day as I stepped into Ruth’s Lingerie to work, I felt surrounded by both my mother and grandmother before me. I was at home.  

Photo by Tabitha Pereira

As for the “Best of Rhode Island” honor, I was totally blown away and unprepared. We had a phone call one day asking if someone could come out to take a photo of our store. Truthfully, I didn’t know exactly what it was for. A month or so earlier I had purchased “pink” shirts for the staff. We had one staff member we were concerned about (her attire). We thought the shirt would be particularly helpful to her. Someone suggested we wear our “pink” shirts for the picture. And we did. I eventually learned that we had been an “Editors’ Pick” for Best of Rhode Island.  Truthfully I was quite naive. I had never been to the Rhode Island Convention Center. It was my devoted staff member, Fran Forte, who drove us there. It was Fran who suggested we have models walking throughout the convention center. She was the one who rounded up the gals.  And she is a true born and bred Rhode Islander.  

I still have photos from the event and very fond memories.  It was quite a day.  

As a store, I think we are still thriving. We serve a wide variety of women — including some preteens being fit to their first real bras as well as 100+ year-olds who are still thriving in their elder years. We are known for our work with breast cancer survivors and classified as a DME supplier for Medicare and all the other medical insurance companies doing business in Rhode Island. We began working with mastectomy clients in the mid-1950s. We are told that we are unusual — a family might arrive with three generations (teenager, mother, grandmother) and all three of them walk out with purchases. Just today I assisted a nun, a mother of the bride, an older woman with a cane … etc. We are a woman’s store — founded and operated by all women. We’re proud of what we do.  

Carol Schwebel visits the Rhode Island Monthly office. Photo by Tabitha Pereira

I thank you for putting a smile on my face. I’m in my late seventies now and like my mother Ruth before me, I work full time. Professionally I have a PhD in education, but while I sometimes miss my years in a classroom, it’s the comfort of knowing that every day we are helping women feel good about themselves and hopefully more confident. Your article made my day. Thank you.  

Sincerely,  

Carol Schwebel 

Ruth’s Lingerie