{"id":173167,"date":"2026-04-22T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/173167\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T20:33:09","slug":"remembering-philly-fashion-icon-ann-gitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/173167\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Philly Fashion Icon Ann Gitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOpinion<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Philly Mag\u2019s former style editor on Ann Gitter, the iconic owner of longtime womenswear boutique Knit Wit, who died on April 14th<\/p>\n

\t\t\tGet a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning \u2014 great with coffee!\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Ann Gitter<\/p>\n

I first met Ann Gitter about 15 years ago, back when I was the shopping and fashion editor of Philadelphia magazine. I met a lot of shop owners during my tenure, and I liked them all, but I fell in love with Ann.<\/p>\n

Ann was off-beat, kooky, singular. She wore all black, all the time, and had been doing so since 1970. But it wasn\u2019t a uniform. Ann\u2019s closet was filled with black clothes, all different shades and shapes and styles and textures, organized with the same militant precision you\u2019d expect from a woman who\u2019d been running a high-end, fashion-forward womenswear boutique in Philly, Knit Wit, since the late 1960s. Ann had 50 different pairs of black pants, and she knew each one by heart \u2014 how they fit, how they moved, how they felt. <\/p>\n

But of course she would know them all. Fashion was her life. After growing up in Elkins Park and graduating with a bachelor\u2019s degree in business administration from Temple in the late 1960s, Ann began working as a buyer and store manager at Knit Wit, a snappy boutique that specialized in knitwear separates. When the shop\u2019s owner sold the business to entrepreneurs Don Davidow and Bob Brandt in 1970, they quickly brought on Ann as a partner.<\/p>\n

The trio would go on to transform Knit Wit into a buzzy, high-style cornerstone of Philadelphia fashion, with Ann at its helm. She was the friendly face of the store and the brains behind the buying; her keen eye brought then-fledgling designers like Betsey Johnson to the city. She was one of Philly\u2019s pioneering fashion forces, part of the new wave of independent boutique owners \u2014 Joan Shepp<\/a> and Toby Lerner among them \u2014 who were following in the footsteps of Philly stalwarts like Nan Duskin and Sophy Curson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The business would shape-shift over the years \u2014 hopscotching from Chestnut to Walnut and back again, and swelling to include a sister store, Plage Tahiti, and additional locations in Bryn Mawr and Margate. (Plage Tahiti closed in 2014 after 32 years in business; Knit Wit shuttered its Center City and Main Line outposts in 2017 and 2020, respectively. Its Margate location<\/a> is still open.)<\/p>\n

But what this list of openings and closings doesn\u2019t tell you is this: Ann carried her cell phone in a small cross-body bag, and when it rang \u2014 during a meeting, during lunch, during a peaceful walk down Chestnut Street together \u2014 it sounded like a flying saucer was landing, the ringtone a sort of sci-fi, alien whistle. Ann\u2019s laugh was warm and throaty, like a hug. Ann collected antique biscuit tins, and teeny-tiny antique chairs that she lined up in antique glass-fronted cabinets, and antique pitchers, and jewelry, and sunglasses, and, of course, clothes.<\/p>\n

\"Photography<\/p>\n

Ann Gitter\u2019s closet, photographed for Philly Mag in 2016 \/ Photograph by Christopher Leaman<\/p>\n

Everyone knew that Ann had razor-sharp bangs, and straight hair that was somewhere between blonde and white, which she braided into a single plait that swept down her back like a ribbon. But no one knew that once, years after I was the style editor, Ann gave me an antique wrought-iron bed \u2014 I forget where or why she had it \u2014 because I told her that I was moving into a new house and didn\u2019t have a lot of furniture. She even had her own movers drive it up to Bucks County for me.<\/p>\n

Or that once, when we were at her home \u2014 a circa-1860 carriage house in Rittenhouse \u2014 to photograph it for a magazine feature in 2011<\/a>, Ann paused the shoot to take our longtime stylist, Lauren Kozakiewicz, into her private fashion archives. \u201cMy daughter was around 12 years old at the time, and I was telling Ann about how she loved Betsey Johnson,\u201d says Kozakiewicz. \u201cAnd in the middle of the shoot, Ann took me up to her archives and gifted me two pieces of vintage Betsey Johnson for her. That\u2019s the kind of person she was.\u201d Kozakiewicz\u2019s daughter, now in her mid-twenties, still wears them.<\/p>\n

I have a few pieces that Ann gave me over the years, all from this perfectly archived collection of treasures \u2014 a vintage Comme des Gar\u00e7ons scarf, a few chunky silver rings, a pair of delicate gold earrings shaped like peacocks, a 1970s clutch shaped like a folded-up magazine. And I still have some items that I bought from her stores over the years, too \u2014 like a boxy, cream-colored leather vest with a silver patch by the shoulder, and a cozy wool coat with leather sleeves. They remind me of a period of my life when my job was to shop in all the boutiques of Philly, to get to know the people who owned them, these creatives who were walking a path carved by luminaries like Ann. But if my closet held a few stories, Ann\u2019s was an entire library.<\/p>\n

\"Ann<\/p>\n

We went to lunch, often at Zama in Rittenhouse Square, talking about our husbands \u2014 she was married to Stephen Gitter for 56 years \u2014 and our families. We talked about my writing, and about her early years in the fashion industry. We fell out of touch several years ago, after I had my son and went freelance, writing stories from my home in Yardley. But I thought of her often, because how couldn\u2019t I? Her rings are on my fingers all the time, chunky, funky silver pieces that clink together when I move my hands. They are clinking together now, as I write this.<\/p>\n

When I wrote the story about her house in 2011, she told me that they\u2019d bought it in 2001 \u2014 a dark, old structure that still had dirt floors where the stables had been \u2014 and then gutted it, turning it into a beautiful space that mixed modernism with Philadelphia history. They loved the process; everything for Ann was about design and art and beauty. The only problem: They adored the house so much that they couldn\u2019t imagine ever leaving it, which meant they likely wouldn\u2019t get to experience another renovation project. \u201cWe love it so much, we can\u2019t move,\u201d Ann said at the time. \u201cMy saddest thing is that we\u2019re so happy here.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now, Ann, I guess my saddest thing is that you have moved on, hopefully happily, to somewhere else. But we\u2019re still here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opinion Philly Mag\u2019s former style editor on Ann Gitter, the iconic owner of longtime womenswear boutique Knit Wit,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-173167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}