A new look – Perlis Clothing hosts grand opening Saturday

A New Orleans clothing staple now has a Baton Rouge home. Perlis Clothing, a men’s and women’s clothier with two locations in the Crescent City and another in Mandeville, has remodeled and rebuilt the former Cohn Turner store on Jefferson Highway.

On Saturday, Perlis Clothing will host its grand opening event at 11 a.m. Curbside will be on site serving burgers and fries.

The build-up to this weekend’s event has been slow and steady, says Perlis President David W. Perlis. The store previously hosted a soft event with 30-40 people from the community to let customers know what Cohn Turner would become, Perlis says.

In the rebuilding process, Perlis and general manager Bobby Berthelot says they gave the store new wood floors, carpeting, ceiling tiles, lights, changed the shoe department’s feel and look, and redid the men and women’s fitting rooms.

“We made a 27-year-old store look new again,” Berthelot says.

The biggest challenge for Perlis was rebranding the store. Cohn Turner has a long history in Baton Rouge—its first store opened in 1959 in the Westmoreland Shopping Center. However, after a few surveys, Perlis found that not only was a name change acceptable, it was also advantageous for both stores and his brand.

“Perlis was coming to Baton Rouge September 2013 with or without Cohn Turner,” he says. “This opportunity presented itself to try to reinvigorate and protect the future of a 53-year store where people had been taken care of for several generations.”

In addition to the sportswear and the trademark Crawfish-marked Polos, Perlis Clothing also offers formal wear, women’s and children’s clothing, mixing the best of both the Cohn Turner and Perlis worlds, Perlis says.

Even though there is a different name and logo outside that storied clothing store, Perlis says you can expect the same, quality experience.

“We feel like first and foremost, our retail experience is going to be about the product and people on the inside of the store,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what name is on the outside. If they don’t have the right people and the product, they’re not going to do business.”