A look at how that momentum is reshaping the peninsula’s retail landscape
The Shops at The Charleston Place
So you’re in the market for a new handbag. It’s fall, after all, and that off-white number you’ve been toting around all summer is sporting a few sweet-tea and sunscreen stains. Let’s pop into The Shops at Charleston Place—ahhh, the air-conditioned corridors, the lovely public restrooms scented with the hotel’s signature fragrance, and the convenient parking garage.
First stop: Louis Vuitton, where, if you’re doing more shopping, you might opt for the $3,350 “Neverfull MM” from Vuitton’s Monogram Emblème line, a roomy tote for the “never finished” shopper looking to stash other purchases. Or perhaps a Gucci shoulder bag with that iconic green-and-red-stripe ribbon is more your speed, and budget, at $2,350. There are plenty to choose from, thanks to Gucci’s 2023 expansion into a larger 4,200-square-foot Charleston Place boutique fronting King Street.
In fact, there are plenty of upscale handbag options (among other items) all along King Street these days, from classic Louis Vuitton to a fun Beau & Ro “Fuzzy” purse ($238), or the smart Dries Van Noten pleated leather number ($1,095) I’ve been eyeing at Hampden. And according to store owners, plus personal observation while jostling along crowded sidewalks, there are plenty of shoppers in Charleston ready to dip into those purses to make a luxury purchase. That’s a relatively new phenomenon.
Rhett Outten and Mariana Hay, the sibling owners of Croghan’s Jewel Box, can chart the evolution of King Street’s retail landscape as well as anyone. Their five-generation family jewelry store has been a stalwart on King for more than a century and is the go-to for locals celebrating anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, graduations, and other special occasions. The store has survived booms and busts, hurricanes, wars, an earthquake, the Great Depression, the 2008 recession, a pandemic, and—most recently—a move to a new, more spacious, lower King Street location, and the sisters are happy to report that sales today are stronger than ever.
“Now with more direct flights to Charleston, we’re seeing planes full of people with cash in their pockets who want to take home something new and different, and let me tell you, they are shopping!” says Outten. While in the past, the typical Croghan’s customer skewed toward men buying gifts for spouses or girlfriends, Outten is seeing more female purchasers—“women on girls’ trips from smaller markets like Richmond, Norfolk, and Louisville who are looking for shops and goods they don’t have at home. King Street seems to fit the bill,” she says.
At Croghan’s longtime neighbor, M. Dumas & Sons, men are splurging, too. As the third-oldest retailer on King Street, approaching its 110th year, M. Dumas has similarly weathered retail’s ups and downs, but the trajectory has been up, and more up, for the last six to eight years, says Taylor Eubanks, Dumas’s senior director. Eubanks attributes that upswing to “our growth in luxury. We’re drinking from a fire hose to keep up with demand,” he says. While the menswear store still stocks plenty of moderately priced khakis, chinos, and polos, its buyers “took a leap” a few years ago, introducing the $1,200 Kiton jean to the Charleston market, and haven’t looked back.
“Our bread and butter will always be casual wear, but what’s really exciting us is the ready-to-wear Italian luxury lines we’re now carrying. They’re on fire for the store,” Eubanks says. He has regular customers who don’t blink at a $6,000 blazer, and high-end brands are reaching out, eager to test the market. “They’re starting to realize that Charleston is an untapped market for luxury,” says Eubanks. “Local men have always cared about dressing well, but with an influx of new residents during Covid, plus the opening of The Cooper and soon the Four Seasons and bustling tourism, we have more affluent shoppers than ever.”
When former mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. first proposed a downtown revitalization strategy in 1977, anchored by a major hotel with new retail space in the long-vacant blocks between King, Meeting, Market, and Hasell streets, many locals were skeptical. At the time, downtowns across the country were in demise, as white flight and suburban malls were siphoning off both residents and retail. Since colonial days, King Street—formerly The King’s Highway—has served as the peninsula’s commercial spine, and people, especially downtown locals, still shopped there in the late ’70s and early ’80s. But the shops were mostly mom-and-pop, with a few department stores like S.H. Kress Co. and Kerrison’s, amid many vacant storefronts.
You could buy bobbins and a bolt of fabric at Read Bros., shock plugs at Western Auto, a fridge at Vance’s Appliance and Furniture, and school supplies at Woolworths. Sure, you could find well-heeled shoes at Bob Ellis, fancy evening gowns at Berlin’s, and diamond rings at Croghan’s, but elevated luxury was the exception, not the rule. While Mayor Riley was undoubtedly a visionary, even he likely never imagined that folks would one day be plunking down several grand for European-designer handbags, or dresses and other accessories, along King and Market’s formerly derelict corner.
King Street’s shift from Kerrison’s (once billed as the South’s oldest department store) and Kress five-and-dime to a premiere luxury corridor has been incremental. In November 1986, Gucci arrived in the marbled halls of the new $78-million Charleston Place hotel and retail complex. Still, a decade later, most of the King Street boutiques selling designer goods and high-end wares were locally owned: Berlin’s, Bob Ellis, Christian Michi, Croghan’s, M. Dumas & Sons, RTW, and Worthwhile. When Saks Fifth Avenue opened its “resort store” on the corner of King and Market that year, it signaled a change: the big boys had arrived. It would be another 15 years before King Street would be crowned one of “America’s Top 10 Shopping Streets” by U.S. News & World Report, but those black-and-white shopping bags then seen up and down the sidewalks announced that the Holy City was home to more than steeples. It was sacred to consumers as well and could sustain a national luxury department store.
Fast-forward 30 years, and Saks has been replaced by Target, but King Street today is chockablock with major national retailers. There’s Abercrombie & Fitch, Aerie, Anthropologie, Banana Republic, H&M, J.Crew, Lilly Pulitzer, Madewell, Tommy Bahama, Urban Outfitters, and Vineyard Vines; not to mention specialty goods and accessory retailers including Golden Goose, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade, Kendra Scott, Omega, Sézane, Tecovas, and Veronica Beard. Where Granny’s Goodies, the eclectic patchouli-scented purveyor of all things vintage and slightly weird, used to be, the sleek Apple Store now stands as its antithesis. Two blocks south, where the Catholic Sisters of Mercy once sold books offering spiritual uplift, Kim Kardashian’s Skims now peddles bras with a different uplift. The landscape has changed.
While the national brand dominance along Middle King can feel a bit like Anywhere USA, it’s heartening to know that the locally owned, OG stalwarts, like Grady Ervin, Hampden, and Half-Moon Outfitters, are holding firm. Plus, there are now three independent bookstores on King and an assortment of small boutiques and restaurants sprinkled in, especially on lower and upper King. Longtime Mount Pleasant-based retailer Gwynn’s will be opening a satellite store on lower King this fall in a circa-1878 building they are renovating across from Croghan’s new spot, further solidifying that when it comes to high-end retail, King Street is, well, king.
“Luxury shoppers are looking for experiences, and that’s what we’re hoping to provide,” explains Madison Simon, Gwynn’s director of operations and the third-generation of the family to run the store, who’s overseeing the downtown expansion. “Our new store isn’t replacing Gwynn’s—our DNA has always been Mount Pleasant—we’re just extending who we are to one of the country’s most exciting luxury markets.” There are plans for a Gwynn’s vehicle to shuttle customers between locations or to pick them up at hotels for a personal shopping experience. “We’re all about white-glove service,” Simon adds. “We’ve always been where the locals shop, but now we hope to give the tourists that experience, too.”
Well-established local retailers like Gwynn’s and Croghan’s are fortunate enough to own their King Street buildings, while most store owners and franchises pay steep rents. Real estate demand is high, supply is limited, and the market is super competitive, yet many of the corporate players and global luxury brands don’t balk at rents approaching $100 per square foot. What’s the impact for local businesses and local shoppers? Is Charleston getting too swanky for its own good?
Despite high rents, and sometimes even because of them, new luxury boutiques keep seeking a King Street presence. Handbag designer and fashion entrepreneur Sara Rossi opened Beau & Ro, a multiline women’s clothing and accessories store, on lower King in 2021. Her brand began with the custom handbags she created in her Manhattan apartment and grew to include her own line of dresses, produced in India and sold online, at her Nantucket flagship, and now in Charleston. “The luxury market used to be centered on Nantucket and Palm Beach, but now it’s Nantucket and Charleston,” she says. Charleston, and King Street specifically, have “that special sauce that works for our brand—walkability, an amazingly beautiful city, and a great mix of qualified tourism and established, wealthy locals.” Rossi continues to look for another location to open a third Beau & Ro, “but I keep comparing everything back to Charleston, and it doesn’t measure up, which is why I opened another store next door. I felt like we had more to give on King Street,” she says.
Sister Shop, Rossi’s adjacent boutique that opened in March, is slightly more “artisanal, elevated, and sophisticated,” she says, and includes a shop-within-a-shop that highlights rotating designers-in-residence. “Emerging and established designers get to have this King Street exposure, to test the market or expand their customer base, in a low-risk way,” she explains. She’s booked out for months, and designer inquiries keep coming in. “Both stores had a strong spring, one didn’t cannibalize the other,” she notes, which speaks to the overall health of Charleston’s luxury market. Rossi’s mailman keeps her abreast of what new brands are moving in where, but she’s not worried about the competition. “It just validates for me that we’re in the right spot, and expanding was the right decision. It makes us work harder to make sure we’ve got the best brands or are creating products unique to this market.”
King Street’s tight real estate market meant that Nashville-based fragrance entrepreneurs Jordan and Steve Soderholm had to be patient before bringing their perfume brand, Ranger Station, to Charleston. “It was always on our list,” says Jordan, who loves the city’s energy—“not your typical beach town or Southern city”—and its synergy with Nashville, home of their flagship store, with a second location in New York’s West Village. After crunching their e-commerce data and looking at where brands they consider adjacent, like Buck Mason, are located, the Soderholms knew they wanted a King Street presence. But they needed only 1,000 square feet or less, which limited options. When a spot became available, they jumped. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be beside Chipotle, but that’s King Street. That’s just how it is,” Jordan says.
Extra salsa aside, the location has “exceeded our hopes and expectations,” she adds. Yes, the rent is steep, but foot traffic and sales have been excellent—“people here shop with intention,” she says. But even more, the Soderholms have appreciated the sense of camaraderie and local support. “Hampden reached out and offered to put our perfumes in the front of their store. ‘We love seeing other founder brands on King, how can we support your launch?’ they asked us. An antiques store on Lower King did the same. We came to open a store and found a community,” Jordan says.
Extending that sense of King Street community, of welcome and belonging, that has long been here, however, remains a challenge. Amy Barrett has a background in urban design and planning and worked for the city under Mayor Riley before heading the South Carolina chapter of the Urban Land Institute. She brings a passion for vibrant urban centers to her current role as executive director of the Charleston Downtown Alliance, which oversees the King Street Business Improvement District. “To me King Street is the region’s cultural home, our living room,” she says. “It breaks my heart when I hear people say they don’t go to King Street anymore because it’s too crowded or too expensive or parking is difficult.” It’s crucial, she believes, that locals have access and feel welcome, and she’s hopeful that the city’s relaunched Peninsula Plan and the updating of its Tourism Management Plan will help address this. “It’s really hard to keep our local businesses alive and afoot on King Street because of the high rents and pressure on brands. It’s great to have national tenants—it reflects the quality of experience we have on King Street—but protecting the balance of local versus national is important,” Barrett notes.
However, when the proposed new Tourism Management Plan prioritizes attracting “higher-value” visitors, Jordan Amaker of Lowcountry Local First worries that balance may be jeopardized. She understands that encouraging more spending from fewer visitors could deliver increased economic benefit while minimizing strain, but without careful guardrails, “it can also reshape a destination’s economy,” she suggests.
Affordable housing is already a daunting challenge, and if residents feel priced out of shopping or dining on the peninsula, then the city shifts from being a livable community to being a destination. “Charleston’s draw has never been luxury accommodations or high-end retail,” Amaker adds. “Visitors come here because it feels like a real place with real culture and real neighborhoods. We have local businesses, creatives, and residents who give the city its unique character. A successful tourism strategy should measure whether tourism strengthens the community that makes Charleston worth visiting in the first place.”
Whether Charleston can achieve that precarious, special balance along with that “special sauce” enticing global brands remains to be seen. It’s a good problem to have, Barrett suggests. “When I talk with my peers in downtowns across the country and describe our challenges, they roll their eyes. We’re trying to manage pedestrian flow on crowded narrow streets, while other downtowns are struggling with 60 percent occupancy. It’s a gut check,” she says.
Croghan’s Outten agrees. “King Street is really alive these days,” she says, and shopping is only part of it. The recent addition of American Gardens is bringing families out; award-winning restaurants add flavor; the Charleston Library Society, Gibbes Museum of Art, and multiple bookstores create vibrant gathering places. “To be able to sit in that garden and watch people, or to admire the architecture or take a sketch class—that’s how I define luxury,” Outten says. “It’s a luxury that on this main street we can be exposed to such beauty, knowledge, and fun and be part of something that’s been thriving for hundreds of years.”
