Karina Brez taps former Ralph Lauren creative director for Ocala flagship

Karina Brez Jewelry is taking its equestrian identity into a new retail register with an Ocala flagship at the World Equestrian Center, and the brand has tapped William Peacock, a former Ralph Lauren creative director, to shape the space. The move will be Karina Brez’s first location outside Palm Beach and Wellington, a telling expansion for a jeweler whose business has long been tied to horse-show crowds, luxury resort traffic and the polished rituals of equestrian life.

Peacock brings a fashion-retail pedigree that fits the setting. At Ralph Lauren Corporation, he served as Assistant Creative Director for the Washington, D.C. market and later as Manager of Creative Services in New York, overseeing boutique redesigns across the United States and helping shape the Madison Avenue flagship. He also has fine-jewelry retail experience through Mayors Jewelers, plus a personal equestrian background of his own, having shown horses with his Paso Fino, El Horizonte. In Ocala, that mix of clubby luxury and barn-side familiarity looks like the point: the new boutique is being framed as an elevated retail concept rather than a conventional jewelry counter.

The setting matters as much as the hire. The boutique will sit at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, where The Shoppes Off 80th is slated to open in 2026. WEC says the outdoor shopping district will add 28 storefronts, effectively doubling the property’s retail footprint, and will sit beside The Riding Academy Hotel and The Equestrian Manor. WEC has positioned Ocala as home to one of the largest indoor-outdoor equestrian facilities in the world, and the retail buildout extends that lifestyle proposition beyond the arenas and stables into shopping.

For Karina Brez, the Ocala flagship builds on years of operating inside that world. She said in 2022 that her first World Equestrian Center pop-up was in 2013. Earlier reporting also placed her at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center for about 10 years before she opened her Palm Beach store in late 2021. That trajectory explains why this opening feels less like a detour than a natural escalation: Brez has spent years converting the rhythm of show season into a jewelry business with a loyal following.

Her broader profile helps explain the brand’s credibility in this niche. Brez is a third-generation jeweler and a GIA graduate gemologist, credentials that matter in a market where customers often want more than sparkle and a sales pitch. She has also helped Horses Healing Hearts raise more than $100,000, underscoring a connection to the equestrian community that goes beyond merchandising. The Ocala flagship now turns that history into architecture, design and location, using a Ralph Lauren-trained eye and a WEC address to make fine jewelry feel less like inventory and more like part of a cultivated way of life.