With plans to open more retail locations, venture into international markets and broaden its product offerings, Coniglio Palm Beach is poised for further growth.
Known for its colorful patterns, prints and free-size resortwear, the Palm Beach, Fla., brand has been expanding quickly since launching three years ago.
In an interview with founder Christina Coniglio and president Cara Chen, the two spoke about ways in which they’re looking to grow the brand and what can be expected over the next five years. Eight months into their existence, Coniglio took on two new investors, Andrew Rosen and Stacey Bendet, founder of Alice + Olivia.
Chen is based in New York, while Coniglio is headquartered in Palm Beach. Overall they employ 12 people, and the company uses Rosen’s facilities for finance, logistics, human resources and fulfillment.
Coniglio, a Palm Beach native and Savannah College of Art and Design graduate, cut her team as senior design director at LoveShackFancy in New York City before returning to Florida to start her own business. She explained that she launched her company in 2023 out of a 400-square-foot “teeny tiny little space.”
“We launched with retail and the idea was studio immersion. It was just my workroom. It was meant to be a creative immersion, where I was there every single day. It was like my office and we welcomed people into the early stages. That was how we wanted to begin because it’s free size.” She explained that the concept they were going after — adjustable dual purpose clothing — requires a lot of tutorial and intimate interaction.
The brand currently has a 2,000-square-foot flagship on Royal Poinciana Way in Palm Beach and an off-site studio on Antique Row in West Palm Beach. It also has a 600-square-foot store in East Hampton, N.Y., that is open seasonally. The brand is eyeing more locations in Florida and would consider opening a store in New York but believes it has lots of room for expansion in the South first.
The company’s first product was the Ruffle Power Pareo, which can be worn as a pareo or a skirt and remains one of their bestsellers. “And then our V-neck maxi and shirred half placket minidress. Some of these shapes that we launched with our first assortment are still very much what we carry through now,” Coniglio said. “The goal was always to be kind of a test laboratory within our design studios.” Each store doubles as a studio. She explained when they opened in East Hampton, the entire team moved there for the summer.
Their two top sellers are the Banyan pant, which is a snap pant, and a Move and Groove pant, both of which are adjustable. Coniglio said they do significant business with their silk dupioni. “That is our strongest fabrication under our cotton gauze and cotton/wool,” she said. She said it also gives them the opportunity to play with solids.
“I love prints. I’m a crazy person for color. Obviously, growing up here, I love the loudest, brightest, most high contrast, powerful prints, and we balance that with our solid dupioni, which is really sophisticated and calm, and it broaches another customer who’s not a print person,” she said.
Chen said another product category that has taken off is their souvenir merchandise. For example, they make fun T-shirts, sweatshirts, bumper stickers and lighters. “We made an ‘It’s Better in New York’ T-shirt right around the time that the Knicks won the championship, and we sold hundreds and hundreds of units,” Chen said.
In addition to women’s lifestyle apparel, the brand does kidswear and home, including a bedding assortment and such tabletop items as napkins, tablecloths, runners and place mats. They are continuing to expand home and are eager to get into swim and denim, Coniglio said.
The company offers medium-weight layering jackets and sweaters. “As the business grows, the goal is to be seasonless. We’re not trying to maintain beach and resortwear, so we’re slowly adding in brush flannel, adding some heavier-weight quilted jackets. We have lightweight sweaters that are year-round, and we want to obviously add in intarsias and chunkier cables,” Coniglio said. They have a men’s collaboration that will occur in May.
The company primarily manufactures in India and does some production in China and Portugal. All of their souvenir merchandise is made in West Palm Beach, and they use a local screen printer, as well as a fabric printer in the Bahamas when they can.
The brand’s primary demographic is women between the ages of 35 and 55. Chen said their returning customer to date is 44 percent. According to Chen, the business is more direct-to-consumer than wholesale. The company didn’t launch a website until almost a year after the original retail. “We’re only focused on top specialty stores and mostly hotels” for wholesale, Chen said. The brand makes exclusive products for The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach.
So far, they are in 60 luxury hotels around the world, Chen said. Among their hotel accounts are multiple Four Seasons, multiple Montages, Eden Rock St. Barths and the Rooster Antiperos. Coniglio collaborated with Bloomingdale’s Carousel in 2025, building a 2,000-square-foot space at the New York flagship and will be on Moda Operandi next month. They plan to open pop-ups in Europe next summer.
When Coniglio first took a pop-up store in Southampton, Chen said Rosen walked in and said, “‘Wow, what is this? This is incredible.’ I mean, our stores are merchandised in such a unique and layered way that it immediately caught his attention,” Chen said. He invested immediately.
Reached for comment, Rosen explained why he decided to invest.
“There are a few things I like,” Rosen said. “I like her. She’s the kind of founder that I think can be successful. She’s talented. She’s passionate, and she’s really got a clear vision for her business. I think the other thing is I love that she is really into the resort space.
“I mean, women travel, they go on vacation. They’re going to resorts and buying clothes. I think it’s a good business. It’s a very nice product, and she’s quite clever. She’s creative and she’s a bit quirky. I think that’s what it takes,” Rosen said.
Asked whom he considers the customer for the brand, Rosen said, “I think it’s more of an aesthetic than an age. I think brands that are successful span different generations. I think this definitely spans different generations. It’s a particular aesthetic. It’s a bit quirky and colorful and fun.” He also said the free size brand — adjustable clothing — allows the customer to wear the clothing in different ways.
“At the end of the day, you invest in these companies, you’re betting on people. Stacey [Bendet] was the one who met her [Coniglio] first. Stacey introduced me,” he said.
Turning to the opportunities that lie ahead for the brand, Chen said retail expansion is a priority. The web, which started a little bit late, has already doubled year-over-year, in just a year and a half. “So continuing to invest there, and then rolling out wholesale in a more strategic and larger way,” Chen said.
Collaborations and partnerships are also an important part of the business.
Basically every month coming up, the brand will have a Colony Hotel suite takeover. “We’re taking over one of the suites for the season. We’re changing the drapes and changing the lampshades.” They have a teen collaboration launching in December.
They have been working with Rosen who is guiding them and utilizing his relationships to get into some of the centers that have no vacancies, “but he’s like pushing us to the top of the list,” Chen said.
“We are the new exciting thing, and people want to come to the space to see us. We’re still working on building that team and foundation so that we can take on a lot of the collaborations that are coming our way. We’ve had so many major companies approach us because they’re heard of what the store looks like. They’ll send their design team in, and then all of a sudden, we get a DM. ‘We’d love to do something with you.’ So one of the things that Andrew is really helping us do is kind of sit back, make some really key hires. We just hired across production and design multiple people in the last two months so that we can start to say yes to these bigger things, and we can expand into the categories that Christina so passionately just spoke about,” Chen said.
The two executives declined to give the company’s wholesale volume. Chen said they did double their business year-over-year.
