You ask us this constantly. Usually mid-blow-dry, somewhere around the second pass of the round brush, with the particular intimacy of a woman who has quietly decided that her stylist is now also her therapist, her confidante, and the only person who tells her the truth about that fringe:
“So… are you really from Philadelphia?”
Yes. We really, truly are.
No, we do not have a salon there. There is no flagship on Rittenhouse Square, no satellite location near the Liberty Bell, no secret outpost where someone is doing balayage within sight of a cheesesteak. Our salons are right here, in Naples and Bonita Springs, where they have always been. The Philadelphia part is real. The story behind it is a wonderful accident. And since you keep asking — here it is, the whole thing, finally.
First, let’s talk about the “of”
Say it slowly. Robert of Philadelphia.
It sounds like minor European nobility, doesn’t it? Catherine of Aragon. William of Orange. Robert of Philadelphia. You picture a coat of arms. Possibly a moat. A man who summers somewhere and refers to it as “the country.”
The reality involves a 29-foot motorhome, a dog named Mousse (yes, spelled like the styling product — a hairdresser’s dog was never going to be named anything else), a cat named Abigail, and a front desk that simply needed a way to tell two men named Robert apart on the phone.
We promise it gets better from here. Stay with us.
The man came here to fish. That was the whole plan.
In 1977, Robert DiLella Sr. did the thing that half of the cold, gray Northeast daydreams about and almost no one actually does: he sold everything and left.
Not to open a salon. He’d already owned salons — in Philadelphia, in New Jersey — and he had spent enough winters scraping ice off a windshield to last several lifetimes. He was not chasing an empire. He was chasing sunshine. He wanted warm sand and saltwater and a year-round tan. Above all, the man wanted to fish.
So he loaded up the family — his wife Marlene, their two daughters, their young son, Mousse the dog (yes, spelled like the styling product — it was that kind of family), and Abigail the cat — into a Vogue motorhome that was either 29 or 31 feet long, depending on who’s telling it and how the story has aged (memory expands the way fish stories do). And he pointed the whole operation south.
Now, Dad’s first choice was the Florida Keys. He had visions of Islamorada, a boat, and a more or less permanent state of barefoot. Mom had a different vision. Mom said — and this is a direct quote that has echoed through our family for nearly fifty years — “No way. We are not living in the Keys.” They settled on Naples instead, which tells you everything you need to know about who actually ran the DiLella family.
They didn’t have a house yet. They had the motorhome. So they lived in it — five humans, one dog named Mousse, one cat named Abigail, one very brave gas tank — parked at the Caribbean Trailer Park in North Naples, right at the corner of Old 41 and New 41. (The kids had to get back to school; paradise, it turns out, still has a calendar.) They stayed a good while, until they finally bought a place on the water in Vanderbilt Beach. If you have ever survived a single family road trip with your marriage intact, you understand that Robert and Marlene deserve some kind of medal. (Mousse, presumably, was fine with all of it.)
Naples, back then, was not the Naples you know
Picture it. This was a Naples before the boutiques, before the valet, before “season” became a verb. It was, not so long before, a small, sleepy fishing village that earned its name in the 1880s when promoters swore the bay here surpassed the famous bay of Naples, Italy. There was a pier. There was incredible fishing. There were beaches that went on forever and a pace of life that moved at roughly the speed of a pelican.
For a man who came for the fish, it was paradise. He fell completely in love with it. (You did too, didn’t you? That’s the whole reason any of us are here.)
And then: the two Roberts
To pay for paradise, Robert took a chair at a local salon.
There was, unfortunately, a complication already working there. His name was also Robert. A perfectly nice Robert. From Ohio.
So when clients called to book — and they called constantly, because the man was gifted — the front desk had to ask the question that would, unknowingly, name a business that didn’t exist yet:
“Which Robert would you like — the one from Ohio, or the one from Philadelphia?”
“The one from Philadelphia.” Every time. “Robert of Philadelphia.”
It was never a branding meeting. There was no logo, no focus group, no consultant murmuring about “heritage positioning.” It was a scheduling workaround invented by a receptionist trying to keep two Roberts straight. And like the best things in any family, it just stuck.
The part where he still didn’t want to own a salon
Then that salon closed.
Now, a reasonable man in this situation opens his own place. But our Robert was not interested in being a reasonable, salon-owning man. He wanted to be a fishing man who happened to cut hair. Owning a salon meant build-outs and leases and risk, and he had a motorhome’s worth of belongings and not much else.
But he needed somewhere to work. So he found a small corner space at Third and Broad — which, if you know Old Naples, you already appreciate the comedy of. That corner sits in the historic Third Street South district, the birthplace of Naples, the oldest commercial district in town, two blocks from the Pier. The man who didn’t want a salon accidentally planted one on the single most historic corner in the city.
Here’s where Naples shows you its old soul. The landlord was a gentleman named Carlo Paterno, and Carlo looked at this enormously talented, completely broke, deeply reluctant hairdresser and did something that does not happen anymore. He handed him a blank check.
Build out what you need. Use what you need. Pay me when you can.
On a handshake. The lease, the legend goes, was about three pages long. Try getting that deal today. Try getting anything on a handshake today.
The empire he never wanted
So that’s how it happened. A man who came to Florida to fish, who actively did not want to own a salon, who got his name from a phone call meant to sort out two Roberts, ended up building one of the most beloved family salon groups in Southwest Florida — on a corner he reluctantly rented, with money he didn’t have, on the strength of a stranger’s handshake.
He spent the rest of his life proving Carlo right. Decades of it. A whole family raised in and around these chairs. A team that learned to work the way he believed in — together, generously, for each other — because he was convinced that’s the only way the work is any good. (We still believe it. It’s why we say team care makes the dream hair — and yes, we know it rhymes, and yes, we’re keeping it.)
Now, about that boy in the back of the motorhome — the one who had to get back to school: that was me. Robert DiLella Jr. I took over running the business in the late 1980s. I spent my childhood in a trailer park and my adulthood making sure the family name stayed on the door.
Decades later, my kids — Robert Sr.’s grandkids — and I run the business together, alongside an incredible team that’s been with us for decades; a lot of them ten, twenty, even more years. So the legacy Robert and Marlene started in a 29-foot motorhome lives on. It outlasted the trailer park and that first little corner shop, and it’s still, somehow, the same handshake. It’s still family. And every time someone asks, “are you really from Philadelphia?”, my father gets to be right all over again.
So — are we really from Philadelphia?
Yes. We came down in a motorhome, with a dog named Mousse and a cat named Abigail, chasing sunshine and good fishing, and we never left. We just brought the haircuts with us.
If you’d like to meet the family the easy, no-pressure way, the lowest-stakes door is the best one: book a blowout or a quick consultation. No big commitment, no breakup with anyone, no moat to cross. Just come sit in the chair, let us spoil you a little, and find out in person why the name stuck.
Come meet the family. Three locations in Naples & Bonita Springs.
Book Your VisitEnjoyed this one? It’s the latest in our ongoing series of true-ish, fond, faintly ridiculous stories about hair, loyalty, and the women who keep us in business. The first chapter — on the delicate art of breaking up with a stylist you’ve outgrown — is waiting for you in the Journal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Robert of Philadelphia actually from Philadelphia?
Yes — the founder, Robert DiLella Sr., was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and owned salons there before moving his family to Naples, Florida in 1977. The name came from a scheduling workaround at a local salon where two stylists named Robert worked: the front desk would ask clients, “Which Robert — the one from Ohio, or the one from Philadelphia?” The answer was always “the one from Philadelphia,” and the name stuck.
When did Robert of Philadelphia open in Naples?
Robert of Philadelphia opened its first Naples location in 1980, in a small corner space at Third and Broad in the historic Third Street South district — the oldest commercial district in Naples, two blocks from the pier. The salon was built out on a handshake from landlord Carlo Paterno, who handed Robert DiLella Sr. a blank check and told him to pay when he could.
Who owns Robert of Philadelphia now?
Robert of Philadelphia is still a family business. Robert DiLella Jr. — the young boy who rode down from Philadelphia in the family motorhome — took over in the late 1980s and runs the business today alongside his children (Robert Sr.’s grandchildren) and a team that includes stylists who have been with the salon for ten, twenty, or more years.
How many locations does Robert of Philadelphia have?
Robert of Philadelphia has three locations in Southwest Florida: Bayfront and Village on Venetian Bay in Naples, and Promenade at Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs.