Dive Brief:

• Dallas real estate developer Headington Cos. has acquired Tenoversix, an upscale retailer of apparel, home goods and art, the Dallas Morning News reports. Headington Cos. and Tenoversix didn't immediately return Retail Dive's requests for comment.

• Tenoversix co-founder Kristen Cole has been named president and chief creative officer of Headington's luxury retail brands, which also includes upscale department store Forty Five Ten, acquired in 2014, according to the report. Forty Five Ten has four locations in Dallas, one in Houston and one in Yountville, CA. Tenoversix has locations in Dallas and plans to open one in Miami.

• In the shuffle, fashionista and former Teen Vogue editor Taylor Tomasi Hill, who has been Forty Five Ten vice president, creative and fashion director since 2016, has left, according to Paper City. Forty Five Ten didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Dive Insight:

Walmart and Amazon aren't the only ones keen on expanding their retail empires with acquisitions. Headington, owned by oil tycoon Tim Headington, who is also a movie producer, appears to be getting serious about high-concept luxury retail. 

In a burgeoning economy about to rain tax windfalls onto the wealthiest segments, it's a promising slice of retail, to be sure. The Headington retailers arguably operate in a slice of the slice — high concept retail offering highly curated merchandise within meticulously designed architecture (including, in Tenoversix's case but not Forty Five Ten, online).

"Wealth will … be less equitably distributed," Michael Brown, a partner in A.T. Kearney's consumer products and retail practice, recently wrote in a report emailed to Retail Dive. "When the Baby Boom occurred, the top economic one percent controlled a little more than 10% of all U.S. wealth. Today, 'one percenters' control nearly 39% of all American wealth."

The Headington retailers are taking an approach recently advocated by Brown in a report about the future of American shopping centers by catering to a consumer segment that allows the developer to build what the report's authors call "value centers," with a "hyper-focus on a sub-segment of consumers."

Still, even that segment has its limits, warns retail analyst Nick Egelanian, president of retail development consultants SiteWorks International. "There is no question that we are increasingly in a haves and have-nots world. Luxury will do well, as will more basic concepts like Dollar General and the TJX brands," he told Retail Dive in an email. "That said, luxury retail seems to have reached a peak in 2017 when we started to see hot high street markets like Madison and Fifth Avenues in New York begin to cool off with rents leveling or falling off and some retailers closing stores."