Saks filed for bankruptcy. Barneys is a memory. And yet, in Dallas, luxury retail is holding its own.
That contradiction hit me in full at an intimate dinner in March hosted by Thom Browne inside Forty Five Ten, the Dallas-based luxury retailer celebrating the opening of its new Fort Worth location. Browne doesn’t do many in-store events, which made the whole thing feel appropriately special: tuxedoed staff circulating mini martinis, custom matchbooks, and cultured butter molded into the shape of Hector, Browne’s beloved dachshund and brand mascot.
The guests, consisting of clients and collaborators, were dressed in full Thom Browne uniforms. One woman wore the brand’s signature stripes not in fabric but in embellished watches and jewelry stacked up her arm: the Texas woman epitomized in a single look.
A guest sports Thom Browne at the private dinner inside Forty Five Ten.
“Being in Dallas and seeing everyone come out to celebrate Forty Five Ten and my new collection was so inspiring,” says Browne, who has long been captivated by the style of the Texas woman. “Their team has always supported creativity and craftsmanship at the highest level.”
Forty Five Ten has been around for two decades, sitting just blocks from the original flagship Neiman Marcus (still standing since 1914) and a short walk from Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a fact that hits differently now given the world’s current fixation with Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette on FX. The store was acquired by Headington Companies in 2014, the same group behind the Joule Hotel and some of Dallas’s best restaurants, and that hospitality-first DNA is very much present in how the store operates. You don’t feel sold to; you feel taken care of.
Duran Lantink at Forty Five Ten.
Bibi Van Der Velden at Forty Five Ten.
“Shopping is a sport here,” Forty Five Ten president and COO Anne Wallach told me. The store carries fashion brands you can’t find elsewhere in the city like Bode, Dries Van Noten, and Maison Margiela, while also putting emerging designers like Duran Lantink front and center. In the jewelry section, quirky scarab earrings sit on display, and apparently they fly out the door. “It’s introducing things to people that they fall in love with on their own,” Wallach says of their approach. If a brand is sold at five other Dallas retailers, they’ll pass on it—even if it would sell. This isn’t a customer who wants something safe; she wants to be first, and she trusts the store’s curation and point of view.
“Dallas women are cool,” echoed Jonathan Merla, VP of marketing at Headington. “The rest of the world is just finding out what Dallas has known for a very long time.”
Merla himself embodied the store’s philosophy perfectly—dressed head-to-toe in Comme des Garçons all weekend, he ushered us around town to Las Palmas for the city’s best Tex-Mex (where the owner greeted us in a full suit and alligator cowboy boots) and to The Tango Room for dinner and caviar martinis and informed us of his latest venture with Headington, ShyBoy, the city’s first hi-fi vinyl bar. Furthering the point—the city is pulsing with a creative heartbeat and the hospitality to match.
There’s also a practical side to Dallas’s fashion rise: no state income tax, more space, lower overhead. Women here have the disposable income to take risks. They’re dressing for themselves. “If you’re steadfast in serving your client and not serving the wider fashion cycle, that’s how you stay alive,” Merla told me.
The Fort Worth location (about 45 minutes from Dallas) that opened on March 21 isn’t a gamble. It’s a response to customers already there. Maybe luxury retail isn’t dying, it’s just getting more intentional by focusing on the places where it works, and Texas is getting it exactly right.
Lead Image: Forty Five Ten Fort Worth. Courtesy of Forty Five Ten.
Jessica (aka Jess) is a Senior Fashion Editor at Cosmopolitan, working across both fashion market and styling for print stories, as well as digital fashion and commerce coverage. Prior to joining Cosmo, she worked in fashion at Vanity Fair. Jess lives in New York City and loves spotlighting emerging designers you might not have heard of yet—while also being an unabashedly devoted Love Island fan (dating back to Season 1 of Love Island UK, that’s how serious). See more of her work here, and follow her on Instagram if you love her.