Lynn Shapiro, with her daughter, Lauren Shapiro
Photo courtesy of Lauren Shapiro
Second chances are Lauren Shapiro’s specialty. The 34-year-old spends most of her time at Boca Raton Regional Hospital as an emergency room physician, saving lives and working to make the sick well again.
When she isn’t at the hospital, Shapiro is in her Delray Beach home focusing on her sewing business, Shapeau.
Shapeau started in 2021, when Shapiro’s mother, Lynn, asked if she could turn one of her quilts into a coat. She did, and the project sparked a business that transforms vintage hand-stitched quilts into wearable works of art.
“If you had told me five years ago that I would have a fashion company, I would have laughed in your face,” Shapiro says.
But it makes sense — Shapiro has spent most of her life creating things. When she was younger, she turned blankets into dresses, and she loved to sketch. She jokes that her notes from medical school look more like drawings than study materials.
Her father, an orthopedic surgeon in Boca Raton, inspired her love for medicine through the way he cared for patients. But even meaningful work has its challenges. For Shapiro, the most difficult period came during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was working in an emergency room in New York City, and the stress began to take a toll. Needing an outlet, she started to sew.
It helped that Shapiro already had a collection of vintage quilts; her family cherishes antiques and hunts for them like prospectors searching for treasure, traveling across the country in search of inspirational pieces.
“Some quilts took months or years to create,” she says. “We love celebrating them as masterpieces.”
Shapiro doesn’t plan to quit her day job, so when Shapeau grew, she knew she needed help to make it a success. She recruited her mother and her sister, Allie Schwartz, who lives in New York City; together, they’ve sold more than 800 pieces to customers across the country.
“The heart of what we do is to preserve this art form and give back,” Shapiro says. “My hope is people fall in love with quilts as we have.”