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Stewart, the Olsen twins and Victoria Beckham — who have all shopped there while in town. When Musselman died from an aneurism in 2011, Bolke mourned and soldiered on, continuing to build the fashion business and open three offshoots of the brand in Highland Park Village: a coffee, juice and sundries bar (Number One); bookstore (Chapter Two); and casual boutique (Five and Ten). He's become known as an owner who establishes long-term emotional relationships not only with clients and vendors, but with employees — his visual manager Kim Lawrie first worked for him in visual design at Neiman Marcus 27 years ago. "I value my friendships more than anything in life," he says. "Building relationships — that's what any successful business is about." I n mid-August, shortly after the news broke about Forty Five Ten's new downtown location, Sills and Bolke are meeting over morning coffee at the T Room, the store's über-popular cafe. Sills is dressed in a fitted and flared navy dress by Rachel Comey from Headington's boutique, TenOverSix. It's a daring departure from her usual uniform of black, beige and white, she jokes. "I'm pretty understated," she adds. Her look may be reductive, but she's a born fashion lover — a trait she inherited from her mother, "a relentless shopper" who gave Sills her Neiman Marcus credit card to use in high school (Greenhill and W.T. White) and as an undergrad at SMU (she wore Valentino jeans to class), where she majored in dance and theater. "I still remember my mother's Neiman's card number after all these years," she confesses. After college, she traded performing for a job as an assistant buyer at the boutique The Carriage Shop, which she calls "an incredible training ground where I learned the business side of fashion. We worked seven days a week — it was an immersion for two years." She used that learned business acumen to buy The Gazebo, at age 25. "You are fearless at that age," says Sills, who filled her store with European and American collections, bringing Richard Tyler, Michael Kors, Donna Karan and Isaac Mizrahi to Dallas for the first time. "I treated it like a much larger business than it was. I spent an enormous amount of time looking for new talent." After The Gazebo closed, Sills spent time helping revitalize and expand Chicago-based Ultimo boutique into new markets, including Dallas. Being named vice president and general manager of Neiman Marcus' flagship store in 1999 "was a gift," she says, because it allowed her to stay in town and focus on raising her three middle-school-aged sons. The legendary store founded by Stanley Marcus was the missing cog in Sills' retail wheel. "It was one more piece of my retail education, with all the complexities of running a large store and all the people involved. It was such a great team." After 14 years, though, she was through. "I was bored; I'd done it all," she says. Sills retired with no intention of "doing anything for seven months" except spending time with family and taking a Bible and women's theology class — something she'd wanted to do for years. "Then I did some consulting with Tim (Headington), and now here we are." HOOKED ON A FEELING On a recent late summer day, Bolke is on his cellphone zooming from meeting to meeting in his car, attempting to describe the design of his new store to a caller. Still a year away from completion, everything is in flux, including whether they will keep the existing old structure where he and Droese talked on the roof in January. Inside, the new Forty Five Ten will work much like the old one, Bolke says — which means the design has to be flexible. "Stores need to act more like stage sets. It's much more about programming than it is about curating and editing. That's what will excite people," he says. "It won't be about a singular experience — coming in and buying something. It will involve taste and smell and vision and feel. Every sense has to be explored. When we think about a new season coming, we are not thinking just about long skirts; there's much more to it. It'll include the colors you'll be seeing, the food we'll be serving, the music we'll be playing. It'll be a collaboration between the chef, the DJ and all of us — we'll be working together for that feel." Bolke is inspired by everything he experiences, and that's one reason he's hesitant to talk particulars when it comes to the design. "We live in this world of all-of-a-sudden, an Instagram society where people are busy living in the future, where clients can see the collections before we do. So the design of the store can change and will change, because I might be inspired by something new in four months. Creation is a moving process and it won't stop when we open the door." Midway through his phone conversation, Bolke rings off temporarily to take a call from Kelly Wearstler, the celebrity interior designer whose home collection is currently in Forty Five Ten. As it's envisioned in Bolke's head now, an entire floor of the proposed multilevel store might be devoted to home decor, allowing vendors like Wearstler to send their entire collections, rather than a handful of pieces. "It'll be a much bigger physical part of the new store. We'll have a serious home floor, along with a real, definitive gift department. But when people can see an object and Google it first, that's when the word 'edit' becomes important, because we've edited it for you, and you can touch and feel it. In the same way art and fashion have blurred, the lines between art and interiors have blurred — true artists will have created the things we are looking at." At approximately 45,000 (and hopefully 10 more) square feet, the new Forty Five Ten threatens to become more like a department store than the chic and cozy destination customers have come to worship. "The spaces are going to be surprisingly intimate," says Bolke. "There won't be giant storefront windows like a department store and big open spaces you get lost in. It'll be a lot about bringing in natural light, with windows that actually open to the views. A lot of energy is being put into making these spaces feel very livable." Droese says, "There are certain things we keep coming back to as references that are intriguing. The Dover Street Market building in New York City continues to come up in conversation, the way its small spaces are designed inside a large volume." For Droese, that means keeping Forty Five Ten's organic feel, with reclaimed wood flooring, wall surfaces, and fixtures. The ceiling height and room scale will feel more residential. He'll also bring the outside in. "It's a cool spot, not just about the interior space," Droese envisions. "Why not capture the view outside? The idea is that we'll have operable doors to the outside on all levels. The windows will work as recessed balconies with large casements to let in natural light and air," all visionary concepts at this point. At three stories tall, Tasset's eyeball sculpture should provide much of that proposed view to the west. "We'll definitely make use of it," he says. "You'll be able to see it from every level — or actually, it will see you." The team is also taking inspiration from smaller department stores such as Wilkes Bashford in San Francisco, where Bolke used to shop as a teenager, and The Webster in Miami, which Bolke admires for its ability to focus on the way it services the local clientele while also being global. For the rooftop, Droese looks to the Gramercy Park hotel in New York City, with its popular penthouse terrace. Furnishings inside the store, Droese says, will be a mix of custom and vintage classics. "Brian is constantly moving things around and changing the environment, so everything will be moveable. He's a big fan of custom fixtures, so we'll do those mixed with something like a Nakashima table, and furniture and chairs he's selling." Color-wise, expect to see more earth tones and woods, although Droese admits the look will be a little more contemporary than the existing store. "Brian's a fan of contemporary wall coverings, and I'm sure that will come into play. Also, we'll raise the level of finishes a few bars." I t's been years since the 100-year-old Neiman Marcus flagship's last renovation, and although nobody's saying it outright, general manager Jeff Byron hints that Forty Five Ten's imminent arrival has spurred plans for a redo. "One-hundred-year-old buildings always need some keeping up," he demurs. In fact, the store's move has become a cause for celebration up and down Main Street. "We've been waiting for years for a good neighbor, and Forty Five Ten is a great neighbor," says Byron, who reminds us that when Neiman Marcus had a chance to bail on downtown a few years ago, it chose to stay, trusting that, with the help of the nonprofit group Downtown Dallas, Inc., things would turn around for retail in the city's core. "Competition creates traffic and energy, so we're very, very pleased with the news." But what kind of effect will the inevitable overlap in lines (such as Balenciaga and Givenchy) have on the two stores? According to Richard C. Marcus, former chairman of Neiman Marcus who is now a retail consultant for the Peter J. Solomon Company, sales of both lines will probably soar. He recalls the time right after Neiman Marcus opened its first Beverly Hills store, on the edge of Rodeo Drive. "Some were concerned that Bottega [Veneta] had just opened up a freestanding store on Rodeo, and we had a Bottega shop inside our store. But it actually increased our sales," Marcus says. "A greater mass of retailers in an area pretty much ensures a healthier business." O n August 18, Bolke and his longtime partner Faisal Halum tied the knot in Provincetown in Massachusetts, surrounded by a small group of friends in a ceremony he describes as "real sweet, real simple, real casual." With a new marriage and a new store in the works, Bolke is as pumped about life as he's ever been. He chalks his good fortune up to hard work and good karma. "I'm probably one of the hardest-working people you'll ever meet, and I mean that in a self-deprecating way. You have to live and breathe this business," he says. Men like Tim Headington don't invest in slackers, that's for sure. And the karma part … Well, you probably never knew that he was so superstitious. The Jaguar S-Type with chocolate-brown leather interiors that he drives now was a recent birthday present to himself, but when it arrived early, he let it sit on the lot for two weeks. The wait must have been unbearable. "I had to get it on my actual birthday. Superstitions carry over into everything I do," says Bolke, who once turned a knotted bracelet given to him by vendor Sue Gragg into a lucky talisman. "I didn't take it off for three years," he says. "When I finally did take it off, it was because it had done its job. But change is everything for me, and you can't hang onto things forever." Case in point: For his wedding, jewelry designer Kimberly McDonald created custom platinum bracelets, new talismans that required he forgo the others on his wrists. But what Bolke sees sometimes as incredible good luck — such as snagging a crazy sweater with no arm holes from the Fall 2014 Comme des Garçons collection — is really the result of a great eye and an instinct that's honed razor sharp. The sweater, which graces the September cover of Harper's Bazaar, is the only one in existence — even Rei Kawakubo [Comme des Garçons' designer] doesn't have one, he says. (Bolke recently sold the sweater to designer Azzedine Alaïa, who had been searching the globe for one.) And, a few years ago, Bolke bought a long- sleeved gown from Alexander McQueen designer Sarah Burton that later turned out to be a prototype of the dress Kate Middleton wore at her wedding to Prince William. That one's safely locked in the archives, waiting for the right bride, he notes. And, with a dream team that includes one of the richest men in the world and a retail wizard like Shelle Sills, Bolke's good fortune — good karma, good eye, whichever it is — isn't likely to run out any time soon. "THE MYSTIQUE OF ANY STORE IS EDITING. I HAD A GIFT FOR THAT AT THE GAZEBO, AND BRIAN HAS THAT AT FORTY FIVE TEN." — SHELLE SILLS Brian Bolke