Interesting (and long) article below on how specialty stores across the country are redrawing America's fashion map. I totally agree. the old fashion capitals like New York and LA are reduced to jeans and tee shirt capitals. Here it is in it's entirety because it's by subscription only:
Local Heroes
A growing rank of visionary shop owners is bringing high design to some unlikely places. William Middleton reports on fashion's changing landscape.
Eighteen years ago, Jeffrey Kalinsky was a 25-year-old shoe buyer at Barneys New York with a fair amount of fashion experience and a big dream. He had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father owned Bob Ellis, by any account one of the most elegant shoe stores in the country. When Kalinsky decided to open a shop of his own, he went searching for a location somewhere on the East Coast—New York, his instincts told him, was not in the running. Remembering all the residents of Atlanta who regularly drove the five hours to his father's shop and noticing that department stores had not made Georgia's capital a priority, Kalinsky decided to open a branch of the family business there in 1990. Five years later he added seven lines of women's designer clothing in an adjacent boutique he named Jeffrey. Then in 1999 he returned to New York, pumped Jeffrey up to Manhattan-size proportions with more designers and several menswear labels, and set up shop on a down-and-dirty stretch of 14th Street in the Meatpacking District.
The New York store helped turn the neighborhood into a shopping destination and Jeffrey became a retail phenomenon. This summer department-store giant Nordstrom bought a controlling interest in Kalinsky's company at an estimated cost of $40 million to $50 million (Kalinsky will continue to operate his stores while also overseeing designer clothing for Nordstrom). Though it took big-city exposure to turn Jeffrey into a large-scale success, Kalinsky never forgot his roots. "Opening first in Atlanta was the greatest thing I ever did," he says. "It gave me a much more balanced perspective. There's an amazing group of women there who shop the whole world—a lot of my muses are women I met in Atlanta. New Yorkers tend to forget that there are chic women everywhere in the United States."
Kalinsky is only the most visible member of a group of tastemakers whose shops are flourishing in less fashion-centric cities, from Cincinnati to Seattle. They understand what the late Geraldine Stutz, president of Henri Bendel and a similar pioneer in her day, called dog-whistle fashion. She believed in design that was at such a high pitch it could be heard by very few. But those who got it really got it. That level of style, once limited to Madison Avenue and Rodeo Drive, is now making its way to the heart of the country. Independent specialty stores are redrawing America's fashion map.
More...
www.departures.com
Local Heroes
A growing rank of visionary shop owners is bringing high design to some unlikely places. William Middleton reports on fashion's changing landscape.
Eighteen years ago, Jeffrey Kalinsky was a 25-year-old shoe buyer at Barneys New York with a fair amount of fashion experience and a big dream. He had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father owned Bob Ellis, by any account one of the most elegant shoe stores in the country. When Kalinsky decided to open a shop of his own, he went searching for a location somewhere on the East Coast—New York, his instincts told him, was not in the running. Remembering all the residents of Atlanta who regularly drove the five hours to his father's shop and noticing that department stores had not made Georgia's capital a priority, Kalinsky decided to open a branch of the family business there in 1990. Five years later he added seven lines of women's designer clothing in an adjacent boutique he named Jeffrey. Then in 1999 he returned to New York, pumped Jeffrey up to Manhattan-size proportions with more designers and several menswear labels, and set up shop on a down-and-dirty stretch of 14th Street in the Meatpacking District.
The New York store helped turn the neighborhood into a shopping destination and Jeffrey became a retail phenomenon. This summer department-store giant Nordstrom bought a controlling interest in Kalinsky's company at an estimated cost of $40 million to $50 million (Kalinsky will continue to operate his stores while also overseeing designer clothing for Nordstrom). Though it took big-city exposure to turn Jeffrey into a large-scale success, Kalinsky never forgot his roots. "Opening first in Atlanta was the greatest thing I ever did," he says. "It gave me a much more balanced perspective. There's an amazing group of women there who shop the whole world—a lot of my muses are women I met in Atlanta. New Yorkers tend to forget that there are chic women everywhere in the United States."
Kalinsky is only the most visible member of a group of tastemakers whose shops are flourishing in less fashion-centric cities, from Cincinnati to Seattle. They understand what the late Geraldine Stutz, president of Henri Bendel and a similar pioneer in her day, called dog-whistle fashion. She believed in design that was at such a high pitch it could be heard by very few. But those who got it really got it. That level of style, once limited to Madison Avenue and Rodeo Drive, is now making its way to the heart of the country. Independent specialty stores are redrawing America's fashion map.
More...
www.departures.com
