Elyse Walker Opens Napa Valley Store
● The luxury fashion retailer has landed in California Wine Country.
Elyse Walker has set down roots in California Wine Country.
The L.A.-based specialty fashion retailer has opened a 2,800-square-foot store in a historic 1800s building in St. Helena, California.
That brings her total fleet to six Elyse Walker stores, including the recently opened Madison Avenue flagship in Manhattan, and two Towne stores.
Walker and her husband bought a house in the area in 2019, and started spending most of their time there during the COVID19 pandemic.
“It's so magical, the people are incredible, everyone has a story that has to do with wine or their family or hospitality, it's one of the most supportive collaborative communities I have ever experienced,” said Walker, who started doing pop-ups out of her house when her stores were closed, with everyone shopping in face masks.
“It gave me this awareness that there's some great things up here but there was room for a lot more. It was very reminiscent of when I moved to Pacific Palisades in 1996 and opened the first Elyse Walker store there in 1999,” she said of the flourishing, monied communities.
She took a tiny space in the St. Helena business district as a workspace that eventually turned into a mini store.
“One of our great managers moved up from L.A, and we ran on fumes with three people, but it has been one of the most wonderful retail experiences…If we added a new brand, people were so happy. There is nothing for miles, and most people weren't going into San Francisco because of the climate.”
Meanwhile, her husband David Walker, who is in commercial real estate, moved his business to the Napa Valley, and acquired the building in the historic commercial district that she's moved into this week, which, in a bit of kismet, was originally a business named Walker's Hardware.
So what is Napa style?
“Overall, it's casual but we do more event dressing at this store than at almost any other, and we have to work really hard at making sure two people don't show up at the same event wearing the same thing,” she said, noting the store carries 85 out of the 250 designers the company represents, including Bottega Veneta, Chloé, Gabriela Hearst and Saint Laurent. “And people do dress up because there is a San Francisco sensibility. But we also have international clients because there's a huge hospitality business.”
She sells a lot of dresses, wedge shoes (because of events in the grass at vineyards), and delivers her fall collections deeper into October, since Valley temperatures can top 100 degrees in September.
Some of her favorite Napa activities include olive oil and honey tastings, food and wine pairings, and dinners at Bouchon, which she calls “her home away from home.”
She's also a member of the Napa Valley Reserve, which includes an allotment of grapes for blending. “We don't grow the grapes, but our wine label is One Eyed Delilah, named after our dog,” Walker said, not ruling out getting in the wine business herself. “Maybe one day.”