'Real Housewives of New Jersey' star Melissa Gorga opening Huntington boutique

It’s the “Real Housewife” of Huntington village, where reality-TV star Melissa Gorga is opening a second location of Envy, her Ridgewood, New Jersey, boutique.

“Everyone told me it's got to be Huntington,” Gorga, 44, of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” says of friends’ and associates’ reactions to her plan to expand to Long Island. “They said it's the next best other than the Hamptons, that it's just a great shopping town. So I figured let's go for it. I love that The Paramount [music venue] is there and it brings a lot of tourists and a lot of [area] people to town, who would also come stop by my store as well.”

Gorga had announced on Instagram that Envy “is coming to Huntington Village this spring!” Among those commenting on the post was fellow reality-TV denizen Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi LaValle of “Jersey Shore” and its spinoffs, who herself announced in August she was opening a Huntington branch of her New Jersey boutique, The Snooki Shop. “See you there neighbor,” LaValle wrote. The Snooki Shop has yet to open.

Gorga expects her own new store — the address of which she declines to give but which, according to village records, is at 389A New York Ave., the current site of Fab Salon hairstylists — to open in mid-March. “We're interviewing girls from town next week,” she says. A manager from the Ridgewood shop will be brought in to train the new hires.

The new space, which she calls comparably sized to the flagship, will carry similar fashions and accessories. “Long Island girls are so similar to Jersey girls,” she says.

Gorga, with Florida-based fashion entrepreneur Jackie Beard Robinson, had opened the original Envy boutique in Montclair, New Jersey, in December 2015. It closed for a month beginning New Year's weekend in 2017, after a falling-out between the two partners. Robinson at the time said she ended the partnership after having contributed all operating expenses, with Gorga taking a 20% stake for supplying her celebrity brand.

As Gorga recalls it, “We were both owners.” Robinson “was out of state. I was kind of doing all the work and handling everything, and it was all in my name, so I just bought her out.” The store soon reopened, and in 2022 relocated from Montclair to Ridgewood.

The upcoming shop, she says, has no outside investors — not even her husband of 19 years, real estate developer Joe Gorga, 49. (“My husband’s age is wrong everywhere. It's so funny. His birthday is Aug. 21, 1974, but people make him the same age as me. It's so strange.”) He is the brother of fellow New Jersey “Housewives” star Teresa Giudice.

As for the 14th season of the ensemble reality show, which Bravo announced in November without specifying the cast, Gorga says she’ll be among the returnees. “We don't have a set date yet” for the season premiere, but “it’ll be in the spring.”