Despite the ease and convenience of online shopping, which enables us to procure almost anything we want from anywhere in the world in short order, there’s still something wonderful about buying clothes, apparel, decorations for the home or, really anything for that matter, from a store that we know and love and a brand we have come to trust.

Baton Rouge - which likes to call itself "a big small town" -  has several homegrown brands that have been in business for generations. In the years since Katrina we've also welcomed a number of well known retailers from downriver in New Orleans.

One of them is Perlis, a family-owned apparel retailer has been a fixture in New Orleans since 1939 that has dressed generations of Uptown gentlemen and, in more recent decades, women, in what the company calls Southern Style.

In 2009 the Perlis family opened its first Baton Rouge location on Jefferson Highway. Bobby Berthelot has been the store's manager since 2013.

A native of New Orleans, Bobby majored in business and after graduating learned about the ropes of merchandising, retail and made-to-order menswear at the venerable Rubenstein’s on Canal Street in New Orleans then Brook’s Brothers before becoming GM at Perlis in Baton Rouge. 

Lauren LeBlanc Haydel is the founder and owner of Fleurty Girl, another well known south Louisiana brand that hasn’t been around as long as Perlis but is taking the region by storm.

Lauren founded the company in 2009 when she was a single mother of three and decided to risk it all creating t-shirts for women that celebrated New Orleans. Today, there are nine FLeurty Girls, including a location in Baton Rouge that opened in the summer of 2023, and Fleurty Girl ships its south Louisiana-inspired merchandise – including t-shirts, gifts, door hangers, gifts for the home and an amazing array of sparkly Mardi Gras stuff – all over the world. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. Photos by Brian Newton.