A First Look Inside Atlanta’s New Jeffrey Boutique

The new Jeffrey boutique in Atlanta’s Buckhead Village might not open until August 2, but some pieces are already getting snatched up. A navy cropped jacket by designer Daniela Gregis, crinkled linen lined with woven cashmere sold to a client in a preview appointment. The canary yellow version was also quick to be taken home by a client who was trying items on when I visited the store for a preview the Monday before opening. “My store director was worried about whether we could sell a jacket in this shade of yellow for $3,750,” store founder and longtime fashion merchant Jeffrey Kalinsky says, holding it up. “I said, if I can’t sell this jacket, I don’t want to be in business. This is why I’m doing this.”

Kalinsky has been hosting private appointments for longtime clients in the lead up to the official opening. Once he got the merchandise on the floor, he couldn’t wait to sell it, he says. It’s been a litmus test for how customers will respond to the curated collection inside the new Jeffrey, which is making its comeback six years after his former three stores in Atlanta, New York, and Palo Alto closed their doors.

The new store isn’t far from the original Atlanta location, and will open on the same date 36 years on (which happens to be Kalinsky’s birthday). “[Early shoppers] were just so excited to see a point of view — all of this different merchandise is not what they’ve typically been offered,” says Kalinsky. “I think something that especially Europe-based brands don’t necessarily understand is the level of interest in beautiful things by people who live everywhere.”

Kalinsky’s comeback arrives at a particularly trying time for American retailers, even as the US market booms for luxury brands both at home and abroad. The original Jeffrey stores, which were purchased by Nordstrom in 2005 and then shuttered in 2020, serve as a reminder of how cut-throat the industry can be. Kalinsky sees now as a particularly good time to be a specialty store, when people are looking for differentiation, and he still sees a ripe opportunity to bring brands to places outside of cities like New York and Los Angeles. Many of the brands in Jeffrey can’t be found elsewhere in Atlanta.

Jeffrey carries a well-appointed mix of 50 designer brands, presented in a tightly edited assortment that Kalinsky spent the past year putting together and that will be refreshed regularly. He says he never really stopped being a fashion buyer — even in the period between his stores closing and the new one opening, Kalinsky maintained a handful of clients who he styled — and that while his aesthetic has evolved, and the brand mix has changed, his buying approach has remained the same. Everything in the store is something he loves, yet picked with the goal of building a full wardrobe.

The outcome is a mix of fashion, handbags, shoes, and accessories from independent labels and big luxury houses, selected to create a head-to-toe look that Kalinsky feels represents the many facets of modern women’s lives. Sweaters by German knitwear brand Wommelsdorff and Sofie D’Hoore are closely situated to a selection of Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please pieces, and hoodies and cargo shorts by Sacai. A sharp edit of Balenciaga, Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Loewe, Tom Ford, Saint Laurent, Phoebe Philo, and Celine can all be found doing a lap of the racks.

Kalinsky likes offering something no one else in Atlanta is selling: patchwork slip dresses by Dosa, playful heart-dotted button-downs by Mira Mikati, suede Bergfabel coats made in Italy’s Tyrolean region, a trio of shiny lurex tops by Indress, wool fleece quarter-zips by Rier, and lace-trimmed skirts by Belgian lingerie designer Carine Gilson.

He also gravitates toward the brands that reflect how real people dress: Toteme, High Sport (“Everybody who comes in buys High Sport”), Khaite, Fforme, Ossou, Jamie Haller, The Row, Louiza Babouryan — all of which have easy denim, sharp coats, and pull-on pants that look put together enough to dress up or down. And every look can be styled with a shoe, a scarf, sunglasses, a handbag or a pair of earrings, to complete the outfit. “One woman has many sides to her, and I can see all sides,” Kalinsky says.

Nailing the right look for the right woman, whoever she is on the day she shows up to Jeffrey, requires training a team of in-store stylists. Every employee underwent an in-depth crash course of why Kalinsky bought what he did, and got an education on the different brands. He hired a fit model to come to the store for a three-hour session where employees took turns styling her in different ways. Kalinsky looks for team members that are warm and inviting, not fitting the bill of a stereotypically chilly luxury salesperson (“Everyone’s welcome in my tent,” he says). All customers are to be greeted right away, and employees are taught to set up a dressing room just so. It’s the art of selling — but is it a largely lost one? I tell him I’ve heard of brands coming up with new customer service tactics to deal with a Gen Z that doesn’t like to make eye contact.

“I don’t know how to do that,” he says. “I think no matter how old you are, we all have to acknowledge each other.”

That level of service is part of why Kalinsky, for now, plans to only have one store, despite inevitable inquiries about whether or not he’ll ever return to New York. “I’m a controller. I want you to have an experience. It’s already hard for me here, because I can’t wait on everybody. So the minute I open a second store, I’ve already lost control,” he says. “The New York store was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, and I’m very proud of what I did in New York. But the day that store opened, I never had the same joy that I had had when I only had one store, because it just stressed me out.” Once Kalinsky sold his former business to Nordstrom, control was out of his hands — and the retailer later made the decision to close his stores.

Does this mean specialty retail can’t scale? “Some people can grow and have 12 stores. I wish I could let go,” he says. “I’m at a different stage of my life. This is a passion project. It’s a labor of love, and it feels really good to be doing it again.”