Legendary Boston luxury clothing retailer Louis will close in July, ending a 90-year era of catering to the Hub's fashion elite.
The store's lease on the South Boston waterfront is not due to expire until 2020, when condominiums are going up at its Fan Pier location, said Debi Greenberg, Louis's president and owner. But Greenberg said she turned down developer Joe Fallon's offer of space on the first floor of the new building, Twenty Two Liberty.
"He wanted a commitment, but I'm 60 years old, and I just really wasn't ready," said Greenberg, who bought the boutique from her father, Murray Pearlstein, in 1993 and broke the news that it would be closing to her 20 employees yesterday.
"Moving to a new space, to make it right, you would really have to invest," she said. "What I'm hoping to do is community work. I travel six months a year and work six days a week. I want to give back."
In 2010, she made the bold decision to move the boutique from its upscale location at the corner of Newbury and Berkeley streets in the Back Bay to a smaller one tucked behind a towering building on Fan Pier, a move that seemed to defy good business sense.
But since then, sales have risen year over year, Greenberg said, adding that her typical customer "looks for a little more calmness" than the iconic Newbury Street location offered.
When it opened in 1925, LouisBoston, as it was known then, was a men's clothing store serving "executives, politicians and old Boston blue-bloods who wanted the best quality," said Norwell retail consultant Michael Tesler. "That isn't true today. ... That's where Louis had to evolve from."
The store, which has been in Greenberg's family for four generations, added fashion forward women's clothing in the mid-1970s.
Louis joins other luxury brands that are shuttering their unprofitable stores, said Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, a boutique research and consulting firm.
"There's so much competition," Pedraza said. "Some stores are not able to attract enough millennials, and a lot of millennials don't have the money."
Donna Goodison contributed to this report.
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