In 2013, Tiffany’s 10,000-square-foot store on Greene Street in New York’s SoHo neighborhood was recognized with the Store of the Year award for excellence in retail design by the Association for Retail Environments.

The foundation for Anthony Robins’s career was set in his youth during summers working construction jobs in his hometown of New Orleans. While framing, setting drywall, and helping out with plumbing and electrical work for restorations of historic homes, Robins honed his eye for architectural detail.

The experience has since served him well in his work as an architect and real estate executive specializing in the high-end retail market for world-renowned brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Ralph Lauren, and, most recently, Tiffany & Co. When designing and building space to display the goods of brands that have the highest standards regarding quality and panache, he’s found that even the smallest elements require attention.

“There’s a saying: ‘retail is detail,’” Robins says. “Luxury retail is obsession of detail. Everything has to have the same level of execution as the products, or there will be a disconnect that will hurt the brand.”

Robins’s professional career began during the third year of his five-year masters program in architecture at Tulane University. A friend commissioned him to design a 13,000-square-foot home in suburban New Orleans, and the project enabled him to exercise his developing formal design training and apply his hands-on construction experience. After finishing, Robins moved to Los Angeles and touted the house project in his pitch to architecture firms. “While I got many interviews, I began to realize that people were skeptical that I had really designed this large estate before graduating from college,” he says. So, he carried his hand-drawn project documents, a tactic that led to his first professional position.
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