Carolina Herrera looks to make a splash in Palm Beach.

In a major move to expand its retail footprint, the Latest York-based Carolina Herrera will open a Palm Beach, Florida, location within the fourth quarter. The shop, which can open with the resort ’24 collection, is situated at 150 Price Avenue within the Esplanade complex of stores.

“This boutique marks a vital step in our growth strategy reinforcing our ambition to bring the Carolina Herrera brand experience more locally to our known and future consumer, and to enrich our current distribution points,” said Emilie Rubinfeld, president of Carolina Herrera Latest York. “Palm Beach is a proven market for our brand, and now now we have the chance to host and immerse our clients in an environment that reflects the essence of the home and the vision of our creative director — while sharing the entire range of our portfolio of products from daywear, high-evening, beauty and accessories in an opulent space.”

The Palm Beach store joins a broad global retail network for the Puig-owned Herrera brand, which incorporates two wholly owned and operated Carolina Herrera fashion boutiques on Madison Avenue in Latest York and Highland Park Village in Dallas, one newly opened beauty store in Nanjing, China, and greater than 320 license-operated CH Carolina Herrera stores which feature women’s, men’s, children’s and accessories-focused lifestyle collections.

In discussing where else they’d prefer to open more Herrera fashion boutiques, Rubinfeld said, “That is the primary phase of our retail rollout. There’s more to come back on where we’re going. The ambition is that we pop up in locations within the proven key markets,” she said. She said the corporate is expanding its footprint in Florida, Texas and California.

The brand new Herrera outpost can be a 2,200-square-foot corner location that may house the brand’s luxury women’s ready-to-wear collection, in addition to beauty and accessories including handbags, shoes and jewellery. The shop’s design reflects creative director Wes Gordon’s vision first expressed with the renovation of the flagship on Madison Avenue, which was unveiled in August 2019.

The Palm Beach store design will feature the brand’s signature black-and-white limestone hexagonal floor, inspired by the Roman apartment of artist Cy Twombly. Featuring an open-format floor plan, the shop is full of natural light, has blush venetian plaster partitions, and rounded shapes and curved edges on details starting from seating to fixtures and wall transitions — reinforced by columns finished in a textured limestone.

The design has spaces to display women’s ready-to-wear and high-evening styles with a focal feature wall in whitewashed oak to spotlight the brand’s handbag collection.

Two fitting room pods, lined in ivory twill fabric, anchor the ground plan.

“In designing the Palm Beach store, I used to be pondering of it because the courtyard extension of our Madison Avenue mansion, to marry iconic design elements from our flagship with the natural elements that make Palm Beach so unique,” said Gordon, who assumed his role in 2018. “The world of Herrera has at all times felt innately in harmony with Palm Beach to me, so adapting existing design elements to the space was a really organic process. It was vital to me that the identical level of detail and a spotlight is applied to our store environments, the identical way we design and excellent our collections. The image I kept envisioning for Palm Beach was the Herrera woman dancing barefoot in a ballgown — I desired to translate that sense of relaxed elegance to the space.”

Other design elements include dramatic archways framing dark brushed bronze hanging rails, the signature Herrera-Red facade detail with scalloped panels, and a makeup and fragrance corner. Lighter touches which harmonize with the more neutral environment include champagne brass and cerused whitewashed oak, combined with natural caning and rattan. Soft seating with custom upholstery and lighting, marble furniture pieces and rug-work with twisted rope details reflect the proximity to the oceanside landscape.

The project design and development was done in partnership with architect Mao Hughes and interior designer David Lucido.

Rubinfeld said that Florida is a key marketplace for Herrera, together with Latest York, Texas and California. The Palm Beach unit represents the primary time Herrera has had a freestanding store in town. Herrera’s key distribution partners in Florida are Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, together with some smaller specialty stores. The brand had a store in Bal Harbour, Florida, years ago, but currently Palm Beach can be its only freestanding store within the state.

“While you go to Palm Beach, and are only walking down the road, you see numerous women already wearing Herrera,” said Rubinfeld. “Palm Beach has historically been a really strong marketplace for Carolina Herrera, as has been all of Florida. Following the pandemic, our business overall enjoyed momentum globally beyond 2019 levels. That said, Florida, Texas and the Sun Belt overall have shown significant strength. I feel the undeniable fact that we stand for joy, femininity and optimism, and our dresses and collections embody those qualities have made our brand resonate greater than ever,” she said.

What’s vital about this store is it’s coming out of the transition from “Mrs. Herrera, the founder, to Wes in the brand new era of Herrera,” she said.

“The brand new store represents a really 360 vision for the brand. We did a renovation in 2019 of our Madison Avenue flagship store. That is the primary outpost, outside of Latest York, that represents the brand new era of Herrera. We’re really about enthusiastic about bringing the complete Carolina Herrera experience more locally to where now we have known clients, and where we all know now we have a high affinity for the brand,” she said.

In its corner location, Rubinfeld said the shop is situated round the corner to Emilio Pucci and near Saks. “It’s an amazing complex of stores. It has numerous local charm, and it is going to be an amazing Herrera destination. We actually see it as a chance for us to do events and do special projects and highlight latest collections, so we’re very enthusiastic about having a physical space there,” she said.

As for what she hopes the brand new Palm Beach store will say in regards to the brand and the gathering, Rubinfeld said, “Our goal with this store is that it showcases the gathering in a way that conveys the essence of the brand. What are the codes of Carolina Herrera today which are consistent with the codes which are in the gathering? There’s this spirit in the garments that’s joyful and colourful and conveys optimism, and the shop is admittedly the backdrop for that expression for the brand. Our goal is that when a girl walks into the boutique to experience the garments, she connects the garments to the environment. We’ve done our job if she keeps coming back and she or he loves how she feels not only in the garments, but in our spaces,” said Rubinfeld.

The shop will offer Palm Beach customers access to the complete collection, custom orders, pre-access to the collections, exclusives, and alteration services. It is going to also offer custom bridal and high-evening.

“That’s available in all of our stores. It’s an amazing experience. There’s a chance to work with Wes and our design team, and just getting that custom experience if you want something nobody else on this planet has. To give you the chance to supply that in our stores is kind of unique, particularly for an American fashion house to give you the chance to supply that level of couture and customization,” she said. Like he does in Latest York and Dallas, Gordon can be supporting the shop with appearances and tie-ins with local charities, she said.

Whether having a freestanding store in Palm Beach will impact Herrera’s business at Neiman’s or Saks, Rubinfeld said, “It brings attention to the brand. It’s our job to support our department store businesses in all of the markets we’re in, whether or not they share the market with a retail store. Our approach to Palm Beach could be very much aligned to what we do in Latest York.”

Rubinfeld called current business “great,” and said the corporate ended the primary half with double-digit increases in comparison with last yr and “triple digit for digital sales, which for a brand like Carolina Herrera is kind of exciting given our price point.”

She attributed it to very strong collections within the pipeline, and that the corporate turned a corner on shipping and is out of the availability chain disruption. “We’ve had really good shipping and great newness that we’re featuring online. That, together with incredibly strong collections and having the fitting product drop at the fitting time,” she said.

As reported, Herrera showed its resort ’24 collection in Rio de Janeiro on June 1. Even though it was a rain-soaked night, it didn’t dampen the spirt of Gordon’s buoyant collection, WWD reported. The primary resort runway show was a major milestone for the American fashion house, which joined luxury powerhouses Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Dior on the destination show map.

Asked what she anticipates can be bestsellers within the Palm Beach store, Rubinfeld didn’t hesitate.

“I feel it is going to be the ability of the dress. That’s what we do well. Providing dresses that make women feel their most beautiful and assured. I anticipate that the dresses that we proceed to supply within the collections will really resonate,” she said.