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.”