Years before she was overseeing dozens of bridal appointments every weekend at her Waltham emporium, Yolanda Cellucci got her start in fashion focusing on a single important event: her prom.
A friend from an affluent family “bought this fabulous dress, and I couldn’t come anywhere near it,” she recalled in a 2010 interview with The Boston Globe.
“My mom said, ‘Why don’t you make one?’ I made it, and amazingly enough, I won queen of the prom,” she said. “Because it was over the top and different, it made a mark. I realized even then that it wasn’t the amount of money you spend, but how you put it together. I wanted to be sparkly and special, and it worked.”
Dressed in her trademark white outfits, she made her mark in Greater Boston’s fashion world for decades, turning her longtime Waltham business into a destination for brides.
Mrs. Cellucci, who at 91 was immersed in preparing for next Thursday’s fund-raiser to honor her daughter Linda, died in her sleep Monday in her Watertown home, said her other daughter, Sondra Celli.
For years, Mrs. Cellucci’s business was known simply as Yolanda’s and announced its slogan on the side of the building: “Where beautiful lifestyles begin.”
As a working mother of two young girls, Mrs. Cellucci launched her fashion empire decades ago, selling wigs she displayed on bedroom shelving in the family’s fourth-floor walkup apartment in Waltham.
Once she and her husband, Daniel, a plumbing contractor, could afford the $500 rent, an extravagant amount in the 1960s, Mrs. Cellucci opened a Belmont shop with a handful of dresses, about as many wigs, two booths for beauticians, and a few pieces of exercise equipment for women.
Moving later to Waltham, Yolanda’s expanded to include a full beauty salon, spa, and event center. As it absorbed abutting property the business grew to about 60 employees.
“When they ran out of space, my father went in and built a balcony so they could put in more people,” Sondra said. “The bridal book would have 50 or 60 appointments every Saturday. It was crazy.”
For years Mrs. Cellucci kept a piano in her business, and a tuxedo-clad pianist played what she called “semiclassical music” throughout the day and into the evening.
“I’ve given a lot of attention to the atmosphere here, so that when a lady hits the foyer, she’s immediately in an environment that is relaxed, lovely, and a little different from her regular world,” she told the Globe in 1984. “I call it ‘the Yolanda experience.’’’
Stepping into Yolanda’s was akin to “a fantasy world for most women,” she added. “It’s a feeling of fairyland, luxury, pampering, and glamour.”
Renowned for the personal attention she paid to each customer, Mrs. Cellucci kept expanding Yolanda’s until she closed it in 2009.
The business, which grew to generate millions in annual sales, had added in its final years shopping and service opportunities such as tuxedoes and limousines, photography and flowers, cakes and invitations, gown cleaning and restoration.
“She was the ultimate brand,” Jay Calderin, founder and executive director of Boston Fashion Week, told the Globe just before she closed the business. “When you saw her — in her usual head-to-toe white ensemble — it was clear everything she and her company stood for. It was all about glamour.”
Mrs. Cellucci also helped inspire and guide the careers of others in her field.
“Yolanda was the definition of a legend,” fashion designer David Josef posted on Instagram after she died. “She was my love, my mentor, my friend! There would never have been David Josef without Yolanda Cellucci.”
The youngest of three siblings, Yolanda Marie DiDuca was born on Nov. 16, 1934, a daughter of Mary Patuto DiDuca and Ralph DiDuca, who drove a truck for Hood Rubber Co. of Watertown until it closed, and then was a gardener.
“When I was very young, we were very poor,” Mrs. Cellucci told the Globe.
After high school, she took a job at Hood Rubber, where she was working as a secretary when she met a colleague’s brother, Daniel Blaise Cellucci.
They married in 1956 and soon after he started Dan-Cel, a plumbing and heating business that grew into a mechanical engineering company. He sold his business only a few years before dying of cancer at 86, in 2021.
Mrs. Cellucci remained devoted to her husband to the end. “My mom sat by his bed every day for 13 hours a day for the last six weeks,” Sondra said for his obituary.
Their two daughters followed Mrs. Cellucci into fashion. Sondra is a fashion designer. Linda Cole Petrosian, who died of cancer in 2018, was an accomplished model.
To honor her daughter’s memory, Mrs. Cellucci helped found the Our Girl Linda Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for cancer research and patient care, later that year.
Mrs. Cellucci had started her wig business when her daughters were in their first years of elementary school.
“She used to drive to us to school in red hair and pick us up with blonde hair,” Sondra recalled, laughing.
At one point, the girls asked their mother if she could dress a little more like other moms — something less flashy than a gold raincoat. “She went out and bought a beige raincoat to make us happy,” Sondra said. “Looking back now, she was different and extraordinary.”
Mrs. Cellucci eventually expanded to what she called “the total-woman concept” for her business. “Women loved the transformation when they put on a wig, but I felt that was not enough,” she said in 1984.
Though she had a careful eye for evolving fashion trends and traveled to New York City to choose wares for her business, her personal taste ran to eye-catching flourishes.
“I like the glitter, I have to admit,” she said. “Sequins and glitter are my kind of thing.”
In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Cellucci leaves three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Friends will begin gathering for a wake at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in Joyce Funeral Home in Waltham. A funeral Mass will be said at noon in Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted Church in Waltham. Burial will be private.
To her career and her philanthropy, Mrs. Cellucci brought an untiring work ethic.
“She used to say, ‘Do something you love and the money will come. You have to work anyway, so you might as well do something you love,’” Sondra recalled.
Yet, she said, Mrs. Cellucci was equally devoted to the lives of her daughters and grandchildren, pausing in meetings to take all their calls and attending every school event.
“I don’t know how she did what she did,” Sondra said. “And her grandchildren were everything. She would tell people, ‘The kids called, I have to go here, I have to go there.’”
To honor the memory of her daughter Linda, who died at 57, Mrs. Cellucci was still putting in hours of preparation for the annual fund-raiser, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 17 at American Legion Post 440 in Newton.
Her work didn’t end when each year’s event was over.
“She was 91 and still did all the paperwork for it,” Sondra said. “And she handwrote 600 thank-you notes every year. I said, ‘Mom, we can make postcards,’ and she said, ‘No, that’s not right. They made a donation.’”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.