Jeffrey Kalinsky Returns to Retail at a Crucial Time for Independent Designers
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.”
