Olympe Boisse opened her fashionable millinery and dressmaking shop on Chartres Street in 1851. She moved to Canal Street in 1864 and remained in business there for two decades. Madame Olympe was the best modiste in the city, offering gowns, bonnets, wraps, and artificial flowers of the highest quality and in the latest styles. At the end of each summer, she traveled to Paris, returning in the fall with dresses, fabrics, and accessories in the current fashions, as well as skilled dressmakers to create custom clothing for the women of the city. She is known as one of the first American dressmakers to apply her own label to the clothes she sold.