Business: High-end boutique Hermes to open in Naples

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High-end boutique Hermes to open in Naples

By Times Staff Writer
Published June 6, 2005

Fourteen years ago, a shopping center in Naples landed the state's first Saks Fifth Avenue beyond the realm of South Florida. Saks' overnight success - officials decided to expand the store the first year - began changing the big designer fashion houses' minds about the rest of Florida being some hopeless backwater.

Until then a handful of local fashion merchants were the only places that traded in luxury fashion names.

Today, International Plaza in Tampa and Mall at Millenia in Orlando have drawn an ever-deepening roster of top-tier designer boutiques. And now the Naples spot that served as the luxury launching pad completes the circle by signing up the first Hermes boutique between South Florida and Atlanta.

Hermes - they of the $320 scarf and $145 necktie - ranks up there with Chanel and Prada in playing hard-to-get among designer boutiques.

In addition, Waterside Shops signed several big-time designer boutiques in a new wing that replaces a Jacobsons that closed several years ago. The boutiques opening between November and early spring include Burberry, LaCoste, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Anne Fontaine. High-end jewelers Tiffany & Co. and Cartier have signed leases along with Christolfe, the flatware house. The center is close to signing its second luxury anchor store, but nobody's confirming if it's Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus.

"We worked very hard to get Hermes, but it was really the affluence of the Naples market and the success of Neiman Marcus, Saks and the designer boutiques in Tampa and Orlando that sold it," said Al Ferris, leasing manager for Forbes Co., the Michigan developer that is rebuilding Waterside in a joint venture with Taubman Centers Inc. "I think it's finally clear that the Gulf Coast and Central Florida are on the map with luxury retailers."