IN THE SPOTLIGHT: British Army child, to art history & J.McLaughlin, Caroline Farrington
Once someone meets Caroline Farrington, they are unlikely to forget her. She has the smile, the flair, the looks and, yes, the accent, that make her virtually unforgettable. She comes by all these attributes quite honestly, as a woman who has seen the world, taken the best of it and made a comfortable, low-key living in the town she loves – Boca Grande.
“I love the village-like atmosphere,” she declared. “I love when I have the door open, and I have to be sweeping away the leaves that have blown from across the street. There is always somebody either riding by on a bicycle or walking by that says, ‘Hi, Caroline,’ and I know them. They are clients, and I think it’s beautiful. My daily commute couldn’t be more beautiful, could it? I drive over three bridges, and the views are spectacular. It’s sunny and uplifting.”
Caroline (the ending of her name is “line,” not “lin”) is a dual citizen of the U.S. and the U.K. She grew up in London, where it is “grey! It rains – feels like 90 percent of the time,” she noted, continuing: “You definitely have to pull yourself in; you can’t count on the environment doing a whole lot for you, especially when you live in a city.”
But that dreary weather is only for visits now. For the last 15 years, “coming on 16 years soon,” she noted, she and her husband, Jeffrey, have lived in Southwest Florida. Their home is in Placida Harbour, just off the island. Caroline is the manager of the J.McLaughlin store in downtown Boca Grande. She actually opened that store for the J.McLaughlin company 10 years ago, after coming to the area five years earlier and being part of the retail team at the Gasparilla Inn, working with Jennifer Jaskowiak.
“I arrived here because my mother had a place here,” Caroline explained. “While I was living in England and my children were growing up, this was our holiday destination. We lived in London, and then just outside of London, for about 25 years before we moved here.”
She went on: “So we sold our house, packed up and moved here with the idea that we’d make a decision as to what and where we would go. But my mother was not well, and my stepfather was not well, so we settled down to a couple – two or three years – of looking after them, and that’s why we managed to put our roots down here.”
Caroline has spent much of her life outside the U.S.
“My parents’ background was quite interesting,” Caroline said. “I think it formed a lot of my interests, too.” Caroline’s mother was born in the Belgian Congo, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa. Caroline’s grandmother and grandfather had gone there because he was a diamond mining engineer in 1919. Her grandmother was an artist, a painter.
“My grandmother had a really good eye, and she developed a keen interest in African art; African sculpture. So she formed a collection. She gave some to a museum in Paris, and some to Princeton, where they are now. I think my mother grew up loving art, as well, and took me, as a child, to art museums in whatever city we happened to be in. So that definitely formed my childhood development.”
Caroline noted that this type of childhood impacted her brother in much the same way. She said he is now a publisher of art books with Rizzoli Books of New York, which is known for its books focusing on fashion, interior design, culinary arts, art, architecture and photography fields.
Although Caroline’s father was a British Army Brigadier-General, and most officers’ wives were expected to focus on Army life and social gatherings, her mother was a free spirit. “She became an African historian,” Caroline said with obvious pride. This was also at a time when African history was a new subject of study, she noted. “I think it was exciting for her,” Caroline said. “And she wrote many books; she edited many books. She definitely pushed some boundaries. I mean, when I was a child and we were living in places like Nairobi, it was expected that, as an officer’s wife, the Army would be her focus in life, especially since it was a colony at the time.”
Caroline’s mother took it upon herself to teach three local young men, coaching them on the “Oxbridge Exam,” which was necessary to enter either Oxford or Cambridge University. Two of the three were accepted to the schools because of her work.
“She was always very proud of that,” Caroline said. “It didn’t necessarily go down very well with the other officers’ wives, but I grew up in a very strongly anti-racist family, of which I am very proud.”
So Caroline grew up in a somewhat academic environment. Although her father died when Caroline was quite young, the family did a lot of traveling in those early days.
“We lived in Singapore, Nairobi, and Germany. I went to numerous schools, and after my father died, we settled in London. My mother became an African historian and proceeded to get positions…visiting lecturer, professor at a couple of universities here in the States. That is why we ended up moving over here when I was a child,” she said.
“I ended up living in Ohio because of that,” she continued. “I went to Ohio University, where she taught. My focus, my degree, was in art history. I spent a year in London, studying with Sotheby’s on a year-long ‘works of art’ program. I wanted to be in the art market, in the art field, and that is why Jeffrey and I decided to go to New York. There, after a couple of stints in galleries, I ended up working at Christie’s in New York. I became a cataloguer for impressionist and modern and Latin American art. Latin American was in the very early stages of being a serious department, and began to be viewed as an international collection.”
Things are a little quieter now, but she still loves art and visits art museums whenever she can. She tried her own hand at being an artist but felt she was not good enough. Still, she must have had the right genes, since her daughter is a “very good artist,” and that is enough for her now.
The area Caroline might have gone into, if things had been different, is interior design.
“Probably my greatest passion—or indulgence, if you like—is interior design,” she said. “I read a lot about interior design, and I have a collection of World of Interiors Magazine that goes back to 1991. Yes, it’s huge; and yes, I have traveled all over the place with it, much to my husband’s chagrin, since he has to pack it up—but there it is.”
She has only used all that literature to decorate her own homes, but that is sufficient for today.
Another idea she gave up on a number of years ago was trying to sound like an American.
“At one point I went to five schools over five years in a row. So I tried very hard to be an American and sound like an American when I was 12,” she said. “But it was a bit of a struggle, and in the summers, when we would go back to England, where we had a flat for a long time, my accent would change, literally, on the airplane. It wasn’t until a few years later, after I’d had my children, I was living in London, and I realized that I really felt more English, and I realized that the accent is never going to go away. I get a lot of comments on it, and fine. I guess it’s neither here nor there, but it does seem to be how people identify me.”
Indeed, her accent is part of her personality and adds a kind of charm, in many people’s estimation.
The traveling back and forth continued into her adult life. Her children and five grandchildren all live in England, so she and Jeffrey make that trip fairly often. Jeffrey, who has always been in finance—international finance, commodities, etc.—is currently working as a financial project consultant, with projects in the U.S. and the U.K.
“His job took us to many places, as well,” Caroline said. “We met in Ohio, and moved to New York together, and from there we moved to Bermuda, and then to London, and then back here.” Their first child was born in Bermuda and their second in England.
Travel is still a favorite pastime for Caroline, but she is content being home with her husband, her cat, a good book, or going out on the water in their own boat. She likes being on the water, being at J.McLaughlin, and being in Boca Grande.
She is also very fond of her work.
“I love meeting the clients,” Caroline said. “I love the community spirit in Boca Grande. Also, the JMcL look works for me because it layers so successfully, building classic style with whatever edginess I feel like. It translates well wherever I travel.”
She went on, “When I first took this job, there were about 88 stores. There are now about 180 stores, so it’s a company that has been growing right before my eyes.”
