Early Life and Career
Early Life
Mary Frances “Frankie” Barnett was born in Rome, Georgia, on March 29, 1924, to Eugenia Morton and James Wyatt Barnett. She was much younger than her siblings— Lawrence was sixteen years older, Horace thirteen, and Katherine eleven. She had a happy childhood and relished being with her brothers, who both studied at Martha Berry’s Boys Industrial School.
Welch’s family recognized her style acumen when she was young. By age ten, her mother and her mother’s friends began taking her on trips to Atlanta so she could offer advice on clothes, fabrics, and furniture. At age fifteen, Welch began working at the J. Kuttner Company in Rome, successfully helping the owner select clothes that her friends would like to buy. In 1941, she graduated from Rome High School where she played piccolo and was in the glee club, a literary club, and Tri-Hi-Y (a girls’ club related to the YMCA).
Later that year, Welch enrolled at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, where she studied clothing and design. She was secretary of her sophomore class, worked with the student newspaper and yearbook, and ran a small business out of her dorm room helping other girls have their ball dresses made. She served several times on the May Queen’s court, part of the annual May Day festivities.
On June 3, 1944, Frankie married Bill Welch, her childhood sweetheart. He served as a Marine in Cuba and the Pacific during World War II. They lived briefly in Pensacola, Florida, before returning to Rome. Frankie taught home economics at Rome High School for the 1946-47 school year, and took summer courses at the University of Georgia to meet her teacher certification requirements.
Bill and Frankie returned to Furman in 1947 and Frankie completed her senior year, graduating in 1948. While Bill completed his studies,Frankie modeled and then worked as a sales clerk in ladies’ ready-to-wear at a local store. In 1948 she got a job teaching distributive education, a vocational program, for the South Carolina State Department of Education, focusing on clothing and personality.
The Welches moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1950 where Bill pursued his master’s degree in history, and Frankie both took and taught sewing courses. Their daughter Peggy was born there in 1951. In 1952, the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia for Bill’s work with the Central Intelligence Agency. He later served as a congressional aide and directed the Veterans Administration Congressional Liaison Service. Their second daughter, Genie, was born in 1955.
Fashion Consulting
Welch began teaching “fashion know-how” in various formats and to a variety of audiences by about 1953. In particular, she taught sewing at the YWCAs in Washington, D.C., and Alexandria. By 1960, she was teaching home economics at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia. Welch continued teaching in the early 1960s while also offering private fashion consultation in styling and coordination. She took pride in maintaining confidential relationships with her clients, stating, “My clients know that my service is like the doctor’s….I do not disclose their names.”
Consulting with Welch involved evaluating what was in the individual’s closet, considering what was current, what needed repairs, what could be remodeled, and what best complemented the individual’s personality. She typically advised: “Buy fewer things of better quality, spend money on classics rather than high fashion fads…[and] buy season-spanning items as much as possible.” Welch also devised a point system inspired by the Duchess of Windsor to help women avoid overdressing. She assigned each element of dress one point if it was simple, or more if it was fancy, and made point total recommendations for women depending on their height.
Welch participated in a national contest for home economics teachers sponsored by the teen magazine Ingenue in 1960 and won a twelve-day trip to Paris and Rome to visit fashion houses and tourist sites. One reporter noted a change in Welch following the trip abroad, a shift from the “‘amateur status’ of consultant to friends and relatives…to ‘professionalism.’” She wrote that the trip "made [her] all the more determined that someday [she] would try [her] hand at designing,” but that most of all it made her want her own clothing specialty shop.
