When designer Matthew Earnest and friend-muse Lily Atherton Hanbury invited us to preview their new store back in March, the Shops at Highland Park space was still a work in progress. The dark herringbone wood floors, silvery expanses of mirror and modish furniture covered in Wedgwood-blue toile offered just a tease of the elegance to come.

This month, if all has gone according to plan, SARTEL opens for business, stocked with clothes and accessories Hanbury describes as "classical, but fresh," and Earnest, a 2003 Parsons grad, says are created for "someone of our generation who has a professional life as well as a social one." The word "impeccable" comes up more than once.

Though Earnest's roots are in Houston, and Hanbury now splits time among New York, her native Virginia and London (her husband is aristo-Brit gallerist Tom Hanbury), Earnest says Dallas is the perfect launch pad. The clothes will be produced and manufactured here. And the address – Aurora on one side, Morgen Chocolate on the other – "fits to a T where our customer is."

A little lunch, some shopping, dessert? Who could say no to that?

Sartel,

4212 Oak Lawn Ave.

Tracy Achor Hayes