It’s the grand opening of Barbara Katz at the Shops at Boca Center, and customers are admiring the new digs with glasses of sparkling wine in their hands. Wooden flooring, gold built-in shelves, sleek marble countertops, glass display cases, and a chic seating area for waiting spouses usher in a new era for the clothing store.
In the hall leading to the dressing room is a gallery wall of photos—from the early days of Barbara Katz’s boutique in North Miami Beach, family photographs with her daughter and granddaughter on buying trips, and even a Boca magazine ad from the 1980s. While the storefront may be new, this eponymous brand has been a South Florida mainstay for 65 years, outfitting Boca Raton’s women for decades.
“It’s very special for me to be able to take this to the next phase. My grandmother and I were really close,” says third-generation owner Cassie Walin. “It’s really special for me to be able to continue her legacy.”
The store has been a fixture in Walin’s life since she was a little girl. A Boca Raton native, she went to the boutique after school, did her homework in the break room, played hide and seek in the dressing rooms, sat on her grandmother’s lap at her desk, and played in the clothing racks. Now, her older daughter Bara, turning 4, does the same.
After college, Walin worked in fashion wholesale in New York City. She returned to Boca Raton to work for the family business, taking on different roles until she took the reins from her mother, Lauri Parker, in the thick of COVID in 2021. It was a blessing in disguise; business was slower, so it allowed her to ease into the new role of managing the company and learning to be a leader to the team.
“I had a very good understanding of the fashion business, the wholesale business, but this was a different side of it, being in retail,” Walin says. “But I think the biggest challenge and the biggest learning curve for me was really, like, managing a team.”
Walin’s grandmother, Barbara Katz, founded her eponymous boutique in 1959 in the carport of her North Miami Beach home, then a storefront in 1963; Walin admires her grandmother’s entrepreneurial spirit in a time when it was rare for women to own a business. “She wasn’t afraid, and she had no fear about starting her own business,” Walin says.
She continues, “I always remember her owning these conversations with men who primarily ran these businesses that she was working with. It was so amazing to see the way that she communicated and the way that she held herself—she was such a strong woman and a strong force.”
Barbara Katz expanded to stores in South Miami, Bal Harbour, Plantation and, in the early ‘80s, Boca Raton. Parker took over the company in the early 2000s, and this summer, Walin relocated the boutique to the Shops at Boca Center. Some of the staff has worked there since the days Katz was at the helm; for example, the woman in accounts payable has been with the company for more than 50 years.
“We had to reinvent the whole layout,” Walin says of the move. “The flooring, the ceiling, the lighting, the carpet, like every little detail was planned out. And it was pretty crazy, especially being pregnant [Walin’s second daughter was born this summer.—Ed.], but it was amazing because I got to design exactly what I wanted.”
The business, of course, has changed since the days of being in a carport. Walin added e-commerce to the business, which now makes up 25% of sales. Customers can still get on-site alterations done, and in the new space, she added a photo studio for the website as well as social media. This has introduced a whole new demographic to the world of Barbara Katz.
“We pretty much utilize Instagram every single day, coming up with new concepts, new reels, at least just posting stories,” Walin explains. “That’s our way of getting in front of people who aren’t here too, and they can shop just as easily as someone who lives here can.”
The base clientele is women of leisure 40 and older who are searching for clothing to wear to their next luncheon or clubhouse gathering. But rather than skew younger when she took over, Walin has looked to expand their customer base by bringing in new brands, including denim and children’s clothing.
And the question Walin gets constantly: Could a fourth-generation owner be in the future?
“She says she works at Barbara Katz,” Walin says of her daughter, Bara, with a laugh. “But it’s up to her.”
Follow Barbara Katz on Instagram @barbarakatzboca and check out their collection at barbarakatz.com.
This story is from the September/October 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
