Old School Pampering Returns With a Dreamy New Houston Salon — Tootsies is Getting Fancy

Enough already with online shopping and curbside pickup. While COVID-19 has certainly altered the way we shop, who wouldn’t appreciate a return to old school pampering laced with a glass of champagne. Tootsies is embracing that thought with a dreamy new salon designed to thoroughly pamper fashionistas.

Handsomely furnished in a light-filled private corner, the salon is hosting the Carolina Herrera fall collection through Saturday. It is only the second trunk show hosted by Tootsies since the pandemic shutdown Houston a year ago. The first trunk show was Oscar de la Renta, held last week. The two collections are traveling sans reps from their home base in New York due to pandemic travel considerations.

However, Tootsies creative director Fady Armanious is on hand for personal appointments and for walk-ins. If he is not already engaged.

“This makes the shopping experience a little more exclusive, private,” Armanious tells PaperCity. “A lot of people want a moment of one-on-one and they want to have the time to touch and feel these beautiful clothes.”

Roses are on a side table. The champagne is on ice. Chocolate truffles await on the coffee table. The salon was stylishly designed by interior designer Donna Lewis, wife of Norman Lewis, Tootsies’ owner, with furnishings from Mai Memorial Antiques & Interiors. (If you love the look, it can be yours as the pieces are for sale.)

“It’s luxury,” Armanious says as he surveys the salon. “I feel like a lot of people miss that, the whole intimate experience.”

On this first Thursday of the trunk show, the high-style Armanious is dressed to kill in red and black Alexander McQueen, an homage to the Herrera collection which often focuses on that basic palette. The bold reds and abundance of hearts featured in the trunk show is Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon’s declaration of love for New York, which suffered mightily during the heat of the pandemic.  Gordon has declared this collection “my tribute to the city that never quits.”