Luxury fashion boutique Jeffrey plans return to Atlanta in 2026
A boutique that decades ago brought high fashion and personalized service to Atlanta, helping transform the city’s luxury retail scene, is making a comeback after closing during the pandemic.
Jeffrey Kalinsky plans to resurrect his namesake boutique Jeffrey in 2026. The store is set for the Buckhead Village development.
Kalinsky’s return will come six years after Nordstrom, then a majority owner of Jeffrey, closed the three Jeffrey boutiques in Atlanta, New York City and Palo Alto, California during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The store was, in a lot of ways, an extension of me, and it was my best friend,” Kalinsky said in a Tuesday morning interview. He equated the store closings as similar to experiencing a death. “I felt very gutted.”
Now, he will be the sole owner of the new Jeffrey store in Buckhead, he said.
“Fashion is an important form of expression,” Kalinsky said. “I think people know more about it than ever. I’m just thrilled to be back and be a part of that again.”
Kalinsky grew up around fashion, working for his father Morris Kalinsky’s nationally known Charleston shoe store, Bob Ellis. He also spent time in New York as the women’s shoe buyer for Barneys.
In 1990, the family expanded with a location of Bob Ellis at the upscale Phipps Plaza mall in Buckhead. Kalinsky was manager and part owner, according to a 1990 article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which featured the store opening.
“When I made the decision to open in Atlanta, I felt like (there) was a customer who wanted the best of the best and really loved fashion, and it wasn’t being offered in terms of footwear,” Kalinsky said. “We were the first, at that time, to bring brands like Prada, Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin and many more to Atlanta.”
In 1996, Kalinsky opened a Jil Sander boutique and his first Jeffrey store at Phipps Plaza.
Jeffrey combined emerging designers, luxury labels and a level of curation the city hadn’t seen before, helping put Atlanta on the map as a market that could support luxury retail, observers say.
“It was like we built our own community in the store,” Kalinsky said. “We had such loyal costumers. There was such a love of fashion and new things. There just seems to be an unending desire in Atlanta for discovery as part of the shopping experience.”
A 1998 article in The New York Times called Kalinsky “a Pied Piper of high fashion, convinced that a desire for sophisticated apparel was not limited to Manhattan.”
Michael Phillips, president of Jamestown, the owner of Buckhead Village, said in a statement that Kalinsky “helped establish Atlanta’s luxury retail identity in the 1990s, and now he will help redefine it for today’s consumers.”
The new Jeffrey boutique will have 3,000 square feet of retail space and a 1,000-square-foot styling lounge. It will offer a curated mix of luxury designers such as Gucci, Balenciaga, Loewe, Bottega Veneta and Dries Van Noten.
The boutique is set to open next year on Aug. 2, Kalinsky’s birthday and the same date Bob Ellis had first opened in Phipps Plaza.
“I’m looking forward to finding an apartment so that I can be there often,” Kalinsky said, referring to Atlanta. He lives in New York. “I want our customers to see me in the store. I want to dress our customers. … I want to meet their kids and their parents and all the generations.”
But, Kalinsky doesn’t plan bring back his fashion fundraiser, Jeffrey Fashion Cares, which raised millions for charities over more than two decades.
“Unfortunately, I’m feeling today like that’s done,” he said. “I just wouldn’t want to promise something I couldn’t deliver. But I do think there might be new, more intimate ways to eventually be able to raise money again for breast cancer.”
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