Is Tokyo Escorts the Best-Kept Secret in Fashion?

NASHVILLE — The novelist Ann Patchett, who lives in this city, has said that she brings out-of-town visitors to two places: the Parthenon, the replica of the ancient Greek structure in Centennial Park, and United Apparel Liquidators, or U.A.L. as devotees know it. Both are temples of a sort.

The small clothing chain has three stores in the Nashville area. The flagship is also in the city click here, in a strip mall of no distinction, half-hidden between a nail salon and a Chinese takeout place. Ms. Patchett took the author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert, shopping there one day last year, and during a literary talk that night, they dished about the Christian Dior flats that Ms. Gilbert purchased.

“They were so beautiful,” Ms. Gilbert told the audience, “I was licking them in the store read more.”

Better still, Ms. Patchett noted, the designer shoes were “10 percent of what they had once cost.”

Technically, U.A.L. belongs to the booming retail category known as off-price. But where discounters like Nordstrom Rack and T. J. Maxx have a bargain-basement atmosphere and leftover-seeming merchandise, U.A.L. feels like a designer boutique. Imagine walking into Jeffrey in New York or Fred Segal in Los Angeles and discovering it’s having an everything-must-go fire sale click here.

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The labels offered — Balenciaga, Chanel, Givenchy, Isabel Marant, Public School, Alexander Wang — are dizzying for fashionistas, as are the markdowns. A Thierry Mugler gown that originally retailed for $2,960 will sell at U.A.L. for $740.

A pair of $1,000 Manolo Blahnik leopard-print heels can be had for a relatively paltry $224. U.A.L. marks down 70 percent from full retail as an opening gambit https://www.vipsupermodelescorts.com/ then slashes further from there.

And yet, many fashion insiders have never heard of the place. Its founders, Bill and Melody Cohen, who run the business with their former daughter-in-law, Stephanie Cohen, are savvy if eccentric businesspeople, who for 37 years have operated what the shopping website Racked called the “best-kept secret” in fashion. They locate their stores in secondary markets in the South, in small cities like Hattiesburg, Miss., and Slidell, La., where one doesn’t expect to find, say, a $10,000 crystal-embroidered Dolce & Gabbana bustier dress for sale next to a pool hall with $2 bottles of Michelob Ultra.

One of the women, Tracy Sanchez, said she discovered the store three years ago during a visit to Austin, Tex., where there is a branch. “I was, like: ‘U.A.L.? I don’t get it more info,’” Ms. Sanchez said. “Then I walked in, and it was intoxicating.”

Deeper into the store, a blond woman named Bo Clark emerged from the dressing room wearing an Oscar de la Renta dress, an ivory-colored, long-sleeved number with a mile of lace. “I just got engaged two weeks ago,” Ms. Clark said. “It became operation ‘Let’s get great party dresses and cocktail attire.’”

She had eyed the dress on a previous visit, and when U.A.L. announced through its Instagram account a 30 percent off “White Out Sale” on white garments, she rushed over. Ms. Clark reached around and fished out the tag that showed the original price: $3,500. U.A.L.’s price was $733, and the additional 30 percent off.

“If you’re into style,” she said, “this place is the jackpot.”

There are currently six locations: Hattiesburg; New Orleans; Austin; and the three stores around Nashville, including the newly opened store in Brentwood, Tenn. Northerners who discover them have been known to suddenly start visiting family and friends in the South, or checking airfare to nearby cities. Southerners, meanwhile, when in proximity to a U.A.L., will load up on fashion the way visitors to Cuba hoard cigars.

Ms. Clark recalled being in the Brentwood store recently and meeting a woman who had driven from Atlanta to hit all three Nashville-area stores. “She was swiping that card, let me tell you,” she said.