By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
So it’s time to dig deep in the back of your closet, find those neglected gems you no longer wear and pay Greene Street Consignment Shop a visit.
Greene Street Consignment, which already has locations in Lambertville, Bryn Mawr, Pa., and on South Street in Philadelphia, has just opened its latest clothing consignment store on Nassau Street in Princeton.
On Friday afternoon the store was already abuzz, with last-minute adjustments to the space being made as shoppers browsed and others inquired about consignment terms.
Co-owner Donna Mastrilli, 38, had mastered the new electronic cash register before anyone else, and was gamely manning it despite being eight months pregnant.
Her sister, co-owner Lynn Mastrilli, 47, swept around the bright retail space fielding questions from customers, employees and her daughter, Olivia.
”Very cute, and I never lie,” said Ms. Mastrilli to a customer who had just tried on a frock.
”We opened two days early, Friday the 13th. We are going to defy superstition,” Ms. Mastrilli said, before leaving her sister, Donna, at the register and leading a reporter to the relative quiet at the rear of the store.
Greene Street Consignment was born 19 years ago out of the union of their father’s former bric-a-brac shop in Bryn Mawr and her experience in New York City’s retail fashion world, Ms. Mastrilli said.
”We teamed up and wanted to make consignment seem like real retail,” she said.
Shunning the stereotypical dark corners and clutter of the consignment trade, the sisters instead favor bright interiors, with blond wood floors and stainless steel clothing racks like those in the Soho boutiques Ms. Mastrilli knew when she lived and worked on Greene Street there.
Ms. Mastrilli’s clothing manufacturing and wholesaling business in the city may not have worked out but she and her sister appear to have found the right formula for nearly new attire.
Ms. Mastrilli credits her younger sister with hitting on the idea of melding consignment with high-end retail accoutrements. They used the name of her former clothing venture, she said.
”We kept the name because I’d already incorporated it,” she said.
Their store threw out a few other fusty consignment store rules: No appointments for consignments are necessary, and no demeaning wardrobe assessments. As long as items are in excellent condition, one or two years old at most, Greene Street will accept them.
”We take Gap to designer,” Ms. Mastrilli said, adding she had no problem selling Gap T-shirts alongside loftier clothing.
The two sisters have specifically divided the labor at the stores, Donna handling the finances and administration, while she handles the clothing side, Ms. Mastrilli said.
The sisters’ formula is to locate new stores in “great towns” in the area, said Ms. Mastrilli. Until recently she and her sister both lived in Philadelphia, but she has since moved to New Hope, Pa., and Donna Mastrilli to Phoenixville, Pa.
Princeton seemed the next logical choice for a store.
”The foot traffic is phenomenal,” she said.
Ms. Mastrilli lived in Princeton briefly, in 1990, and was pleasantly surprised by its blossoming into a shopping and tourism destination — albeit unpleasantly surprised by the rents.
”I first became interested and then I looked at the rents and I immediately shelved it,” she says, adding “and then I saw the traffic and I said I’ll give it another look.”
The Princeton store is managed by Renee Weisinger, former owner of Serendipity boutique in Pennington.
”This is my new gig and I love it,” said Ms. Weisinger.
The store is located in the former Nassau Interiors space.
Business at their consignment stores has been relatively impervious to economic fluctuations, Ms. Mastrilli said.
”It’s always good,” she said.
Good economic times or bad, everyone loves a bargain, and buying from a consignment store has lost any stigma it might have had in the past, she said.
Ms. Mastrilli has ambitious plans for her and her sister’s consignment business.
”I want to have lots and lots (of stores). I want to be the first major chain of them,” she said.
”Funny enough, Donna and I could care less about clothes,” she said.
Greene Street Consignment is located at 162 Nassau St. in downtown Princeton. For more information, call 609-924-1990 or go to www.greenestreetconsignment.com.

