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There was a time when Jeffrey Kalinsky never thought he would open another store. The beloved American boutique he founded, Jeffrey, closed its Atlanta, New York and Palo Alto stores in 2020 in the thick of the pandemic. But, as it turns out, he just loves fashion too much. A new Jeffrey store will open its doors in Atlanta next year, on August 2 — the same city and on the same date that the original store opened.
“It’s been a siren song. Immediately, after the stores closed, I kept dreaming. There was just a pull,” says Kalinsky, who opened his first store in 1990 and spent 30 years as one of fashion’s most well-known merchants in the US. In the years following Jeffrey’s shuttering, he worked for two years at Theory as its chief merchant and creative officer. He shares that he’d scroll collections on Vogue Runway every season and think about which pieces he’d pick up, brands like Aurelie and August Barron. “With every fashion show I loved, I wanted to buy and sell that product.”
Once he decided to revive his boutique, it wasn’t hard to bring designer brands on board. The store’s initial mix will include a blend of established luxury labels — Gucci, Balenciaga, Loewe, Dries Van Noten, Phoebe Philo — old favorites like Dosa and emerging names including Sofie D’Hoor and Dusan. “I want to bring some amazing brands from all over the world that some of our clients haven’t heard of,” Kalinsky says. “There will be a sense of discovery in the store.”
That it’s opening in one of fashion’s rising retail cities doesn’t hurt. From Charleston, South Carolina, Kalinsky says he grew up shopping in Atlanta. “I think sometimes, we get focused on one or two cities in the US. Atlanta is this amazing hub for an entire region of the country. It feels like home.”
Customers at the new Jeffrey can expect a similar feel to the original store: the same white backdrop that showcases the product, but with a more intimate, living room-style setup to make women feel comfortable. Located in Atlanta’s trendy Buckhead Village, it will offer valet parking for the local fashion set. It will sell only womenswear, with a focus on ready-to-wear but with accessories, handbags and shoes in the mix to build proper outfits. And it will be all premium brands, he says. “The store will be about luxury no matter the price point. We won’t be carrying any of the contemporary designers that are great, and I have respect for, but I’m going to leave that to the department stores in Atlanta.”
After opening the first Jeffrey, the store expanded to New York City’s Meatpacking District in 1995, and, later in 2018, landed in Palo Alto. At its peak, Jeffrey was known for its razor-sharp buys that mixed heritage luxury with cutting-edge designers, perfectly curated for the fashion set in minimalist, gallery-esque store spaces that became the luxury boutique standard, along with its top-tier customer service and personal styling. Kalinsky sold the business to Nordstrom in 2005, joining the retailer as an executive merchandiser. For 15 years, Jeffrey was vital to luxury’s retail mix, but eventually, it succumbed to the industry leveling caused by the pandemic. “I’d never have made the decision to close. That was a really hard moment for me. I needed to take a minute and imagine how I’d want to come back,” he says.
This time, he’s doing it on his own. The new Jeffrey store has no outside investors or business partners: “I am banking on me. I have three bosses: me, myself and I.”
In some ways, Kalinsky couldn’t be returning to retail at a better time. Specialty stores — the intimate, well-curated boutiques with interesting fashion mixes — are independent designers’ best bet for breaking into the industry. Many department stores and e-tailers, struggling with high costs and thin margins, have consolidated or shuttered, leaving fledgling brands high and dry, and sometimes out hundreds of thousands dollars. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) sites and stores are difficult and expensive to build and maintain. All the while for fashion consumers, discovering new brands has become a significant challenge in a pay-to-play era of SEO and social algorithms. That’s opened up a hunger for more curation.
Jeffrey can’t fix all that, not with a single store. But the reincarnation of a beloved boutique that has a record of good customer service, styling and curation is a bit of good news likely to be welcomed by the industry right now.
“Specialty store merchants can just react. It doesn’t run up the flagpole. You get excited,” Kalinsky says. This is how designer names are made. “I remember buying Jonathan Anderson’s first collection in a showroom with two or three rails. You’re taking a chance, and that’s so exciting.”
Such risk-taking has gotten rare in an industry that’s marched toward more commercialization, sometimes, and to some critics, at the sake of creativity. Global retail chains have in part shaped that. At scale, the art of merchandising can get lost. “It’s not gotten lost by the specialty stores,” he says. “We’re in the community, we’re taking care of our customers. We’re out there in the fields. We’re fighting the good fight.”
Kalinsky’s point of view as a merchant — that special sauce that has defined his career — hasn’t changed, he says. “I like the woman to be the king of the clothing. I don’t want clothing that wears you.” He goes for a clean, simple aesthetic, but can do sparkle and leopard print when the moment calls for it. “[The customer] has a million personalities. I’m always dressing the woman. I intuitively have a sense of people.”
Who is the Jeffrey woman today? He says that in the time since he opened his first store, “everything and nothing has changed”. “The luxury client appreciates a point of view, discovery, service, relationships. This is all about relationships. It’s what made the original store a success.”
It’s safe to assume the industry will be rooting for Jeffrey, but retail success stories are harder to find today. Those steps he took through the 1990s and 2000s to grow his company — opening another location in New York, selling to Nordstrom, opening a third store — likely can’t, or shouldn’t, be retraced. Specialty retail works best kept small. But everyone will wonder: will Jeffrey return to New York?
“Anything’s possible when it comes to a New York store,” Kalinsky says. “Right now, I’m going to focus on Atlanta. More is not better than enough.”
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