BOSTON — Valentino is arriving here in a big way in April with its first Boston store, propelling the city’s strong growth in luxury retail.
The 3,000-square-foot unit at 47 Newbury Street will be Valentino’s seventh in the U.S. It will devote 60 percent of its space to women’s ready-to-wear with the balance going to handbags, shoes and other accessories.
“We think the Boston market represents a little bit of an untapped opportunity for luxury women’s wear,” said Valentino Inc. president and chief executive officer Graziano de Boni, reflecting on several scouting trips to the city. “I kind of sense that the community is becoming a little less New England. The social life is starting to pick up, Barneys is coming in and cool stores like Intermix are doing very well.”
De Boni said the company’s Valentino business at Neiman Marcus in Copley Place, a short walk from Newbury Street, has been strong enough to merit opening a shop-in-shop there, in addition to the stand-alone store.
The Newbury Street interior will be consistent with the brand’s newest door, in Costa Mesa, Calif., which juxtaposes mirrors and pale limestone against dark oak-plank shelving.
The store is at the intersection of Berkeley and Newbury Streets, next door to an Ermenegildo Zegna boutique and caddy corner to powerhouse specialty retailer Louis Boston. Across Newbury Street, Valentino will face a three-floor Brooks Brothers flagship and a Cartier boutique, which is being remodeled. It will occupy about half the space vacated when an Italian restaurant closed two years ago. There is space for another retail tenant in the Beaux Arts building, with a separate entrance at 43 Newbury.
Lisa Saunders, senior vice president and director of leasing for D.L. Saunders, the building’s owner, said the company is considering several other luxury retailers for the neighboring space.
The top two blocks of Newbury Street, which command the city’s top rents — in excess of $100 per square foot, according to real estate experts — are home to Chanel, Burberry, Akris, Cartier, Louis Boston and Max Mara, among others.
Valentino is the latest luxury concern to bow in Boston, following Marc Jacobs’ Newbury Street opening in August. Barneys New York will open a Boston flagship in March, while a second Neiman Marcus and the area’s first Nordstrom will bow to the west, in Natick, Mass., in 2007.