DALLAS — Handbags and sunglasses are in the limelight at Oscar de la Renta’s latest full-line store, which opened last week at NorthPark Center here.
Visiting the boutique, company chief executive officer Alex Bolen explained that the store’s design is similar to that of the Madison Avenue flagship, with a few improvements to showcase handbags and sunglasses more prominently.
“Accessories is a growth business and represents the single biggest opportunity we have in our business, particularly handbags,” Bolen said.
Gesturing to a backlit sunglass display, Bolen said that de la Renta was building its sunglass array with a new collection made of exotic materials like skins and wood that will be sold only in the designer’s boutiques.
The store has a soft, neutral decor of bleached oak floors, cream walls and accents of coral stone quarried next door to the designer’s home in the Dominican Republic.
At 2,500 square feet, the NorthPark unit is the largest so far in de la Renta’s chain of five stores. It’s soon to be eclipsed, however, by the unit that will open in February on Melrose Place in Los Angeles, which will be 4,000 square feet on two levels. The 1,000-square-foot second floor will be dedicated to the company’s first home store, Bolen noted.
“There are a couple of other markets in the U.S. I’m interested in, and internationally I’m working on Moscow for a late spring opening, and Madrid and Paris,” Bolen said. In the U.S., the company is looking at Ala Moana Center in Honolulu and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Like other units, the Dallas store is expected to produce at least $1,000 a square foot. The Madison Avenue store does “several times that,” Bolen said.
The designer already has a solid business in Dallas at Neiman Marcus and Stanley Korshak.
“We think having an Oscar business in strong markets helps everyone’s business,” Bolen said. “We’ve had tremendous success at Madison Avenue, but Bergdorf’s has expanded by double digits since we opened two years ago. We think this will be good for our women’s accounts in the Dallas market as well as for us.”
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The company picked NorthPark Center over other shopping venues here because of its distinctive architecture, monumental sculpture and the efforts of owners Nancy Nasher and David Haemisegger to attract more luxury stores, including Barneys New York, Michael Kors, CH Carolina Herrera, Ferragamo and Porsche Design, among others.
“Dallas has an affluent local customer who likes to dress up both day and night,” Bolen observed. “We really want to communicate what Oscar is all about, and this is a great place to get exposure.”