The Shophound

COMING SOON: Bleecker Street Getting Maison Martin Margiela's Diffusion Boutique MM➅

There aren't too many spaces left on Bleecker Street for new entrants these days, but the departure of the long running gallery, A Clean Well Lighted Place, makes room for Maison Martin Margiela to move in with a boutique devoted to the brand's MM➅ collection. Fashion journalist Jim Shi's TwitPic above has (along with anyone walking down Bleecker Street) tipped off the magical interwebs that the store will be opening "soon", with an official date sure to follow. With the main Margiela boutique not far away on Greenwich Street it makes sense that the brand would choose Bleecker as it is shifting from a designer enclave into a street for various diffusion and contemporary brands like Ralph Lauren's Rugby and RRL labels, Burberry Brit and, of course, Marc by Marc Jacobs. It also signals an effort from the characteristically cryptic house of Margiela that plans may be underfoot for a more aggressive rollout of stores devoted to the brand's less expensive divisions, but a look at the company website will remind anyone that things at Margiela are never as simple as they might seem.

@jimshi809 (Twitter)
Maison Martin Margiela's MM6 Line Is Coming to Bleecker Street (RACKED)

COLLABORATION DEFLATION: Bleecker Street's KARL by Karl Lagerfeld Shop Will Finally Stock Actual Merchandise

A couple of months ago, The Shophound and several other blogs were breathlessly informed that Net-A-Porter would be launching Karl Lagerfeld's new diffusion line KARL with a pop-up shop on Bleecker Street, but they were less clear about the fact that the store would be "virtual" in the sense that it was really a kind of showroom where you could see the collection before ordering it from the website. This proved kind of disappointing to customers who flocked to the store hoping to try things on and buy something and take it home that day, like you do in a real store. A few days later when merchandise to bu arrived, it sold out almost immediately, leaving the iPad-filled shop to its previous "virtual" state.

Racked tells us that starting tomorrow, March 1st at 11 AM, the Bleecker Street space will finally reopen with enough merchandise to keep it going until August of this year with no frustrating fake-outs. Moreover, shoppers who show up tomorrow between 5 PM and 8 PM will get free champagne, and the first 25 who arrive between those hours will receive a free, limited edition tote bag. It's a real live store now, folks. It's almost like when Pinnocchio finally turned into a real boy!

Karl by Karl Lagerfeld Returns to Bleecker Street Tomorrow (RACKED)
KARL by Karl Lagerfeld 375 Bleecker Street between Perry & Charles Streets, West Village
Previously:
Diffusion Frenzy: KARL by Karl Lagerfeld To Debut In A Downtown Pop-Up Tomorrow (1.24.2012)

MAKESHIFT MOXIE: Freemans Sporting Club Gives New Meaning To The Temporary Store

Perhaps it's because its building on the corner of Bleecker and Christopher Streets has been covered in scaffolding nearly since the store opened about a year and a half ago, but The Shophound only just noticed last weekend that Freemans Sporting Club moved its West Village location half a block down the street to 343 Bleecker, right next to Comptoir des Cotonniers. When we commented to one of the sales staff that the move looked like a better location, he laughed and admitted that it was particularly nice not to be in a building that falling down.
Well, that is always a plus.

In fact, the new store is only a temporary location that Freemans will be using until major structural repairs are completed at its previous home, but you may not immediately realize its ephemeral quality after a look at its well appointed interior. The elegantly appointed store is actually a cunningly crafted stage set of a store that can be quickly removed and re-assembled whenever the permanent space is ready to be re-inhabited. In a process exhaustively chronicled by Secret Forts, the folks at Freemans, devotees of authentic Americana, decided to turn to the cheap copies of the expensive antiques they might really want for their store, and quickly transformed a long-empty storefront with all sorts of visual tricks including a remarkable amount of faux bois painting. As Freemans mastermind Taavo Somer tells the blog,

The underlying concept is an authentic fake. Instead of faking a “real” American shop with the trappings of tailoring and products from overseas wrapped in old glory, we wanted to be authentic in what we are doing. We actually are an authentic American made brand, and this is our authentic temporary shop.

In other words, they took a bunch of old stuff and tarted it up to make a whole new/old/fake/real thing. It's just meta enough to delight your average hipster, and at the same time, the perfect setting for Freemans' widely admired classic clothing and accessories.

We actually thought that the space, on a better traveled block of Bleecker, might be better for business than the one it substitutes for, but seeing how cleverly the folks at Freemans have created it, we wouldn't be surprised if they could make a destination out of a basement in the middle of nowhere.

Freemans Sporting Club Temporary Store 343 Bleecker Street between Christopher and West 10th Streets
Field Report : Freemans Sporting Club, Bleecker St, NYC. (Secret Forts)

POP-UP PREVARICATION: Karl Lagerfeld's Bleecker Street Pop-up Is Only Virtual Until Tomorrow

We're going to go out on a limb and say that Net-A-Porter was just a bit misleading in their press release on Tuesday, because they didn't fully explain that the pop-up shop on Bleecker Street launching Karl Lagerfeld's new KARL line would not be featuring actual merchandise. Silly us, we thought that if you launched a collection at a storefront on one of the city's favorite shopping streets, that there would be goods to buy.

Our friends from Racked tell us that a long line of shoppers descended on the store yesterday morning, and the first 50 people in line got gift bags with items from the collection as promised, but when the shop opened, it was only a display allowing visitors to win items from the collection by using the KARL mobile app and pointing their iPads or iPhones at the window. Net-A-Porter staffers were on hand with iPads to assist the non Apple-equipped, but there was nothing to actualy buy and carry away at that time. On the plus side, they reportedly had hot beverages, so ...free coffee for those who didn't win anything?

You can buy it online at Net-A-Porter right now, and Racked promises us that the shop will start offering real merchandise live tomorrow, Friday the 27th of January, so you will still have your chance to shop KARL like a regular, old fashioned tech-free customer this weekend.

Karl Lagerfeld's New Collection Launched With No Clothes (Racked)
Previously:
KARL by Karl Lagerfeld To Debut In A Downtown Pop-Up Tomorrow

 

SCENT SPECIALISTS: Jo Malone Fêtes A New Bleecker Street Branch

Though it has been quietly welcoming customers for a few weeks, Jo Malone officially toasted its latest boutique last night with a party hosted by Marcus Wainwright and David Neville of the neighboring Rag & Bone boutiques and glamorous couple Lucy Sykes and Euan Rellie. Most recently a modest bakery, the jewel box of a shop on the corner of Bleecker and Christopher Streets is now filled with merchandise of a more fragrant sort. Decked out in the brand's signature cream and black color scheme it offers the London-based label's complete line of non-gender specific scents meant to be worn alone or mixed together to create a personally calibrated, multilayered olfactory experience.

The shop joins the Jo Malone boutiques on Madison Avenue and in Grand Central Terminal as the brand's third freestanding Manhattan boutique, and re-establishes a downtown beachhead for the brand after its original Flatiron Building boutique was shuttered a couple of years ago. It also joins sister brand M.A.C as well as Nars and a recently refurbished Diptyque on Bleecker Street for a bigger beauty and fragrance presence on the small but coveted retail stretch.

As guests shipped Champagne and nibbled on tiny canapés suited to the fashion flock, they were invited, in lieu of gift bags, to choose their own product from the store's entire inventory to be wrapped in a personally decorated box. Needless to say, someone is getting a perfume present from The Shophound in a couple of weeks, which we wouldn't normally announce in a blog post, but the SEC has gotten all prickly about such things these days.

Jo Malone 330 Bleecker Street at Christopher Street, West Village

 

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Blush Bows Out But Hangs In On Bleecker Street

Weekend visitors to Bleecker Street found one of the last remnants of the street's past as a neighborhood shopping street in the throes of closure. Blush, a women's boutique commonly described as "funky" is shutting down at 333 Bleecker Street between Christopher and West 10th Streets, but claims to be moving just across the street. What's remarkable is that while most of the independent boutiques that have been evacuated from their precious homes on Bleecker have never been heard from again, this one is relocating, apparently, on the same street. The fact that Blush has lasted as long as it has may be a result of a well-timed lease. In reading online reviews of the store, however, we discovered customers consistently describing the staff as "pushy". Surprisingly, this was not always a criticism (though it wasn't much of a compliment). Perhaps an aggressive sales staff is what an independent store needs to survive in such a valuable location.

Is Blush the kind of tenacious little store that will survive the street's transformation from neighborhood shopping to luxury? Time will tell, but its having found an alternate space on Bleecker speaks well for its survival. We're not exactly sure which space it is moving into, but the bigger question now is what big name (and it's sure to be a big name) will be moving into the prominent storefront at 333 Bleecker?

CHAIN GANG: Ralph Lauren's Rugby Stores Are Open On Bleecker Street

Ralph Lauren has completed his Bleecker Street reshuffling that leaves his West Village stores devoted to specialized diffusion brands rather than his main collection. Last Saturday, he opened his second and third Rugby stores in New York City in the spaces that once housed children's and RRL shops. This being Bleecker Street, the shops are... compact, to say the least, with one for men and one for women. Rugby is Lauren's more "collegiate" line meaning it offers familiar Lauren looks in a trimmer, "younger" silhouette with an emphasis on those preppy classics that built his brand. It is also unique in that, for now at least, the label is only available in freestanding Rugby branded stores and online. These shops differ from the other, larger yet still cluttery Ruby store on University Place by being merchandised in a slightly more grown-up way for Bleecker Streets more grown-up customers with a focus on more tailored looks like the Italian-made suits we found in the men's store.

So Bleecker Street is settled for now, but it's hard not to think of it as a game of musical stores for Lauren and his neighbor Marc Jacobs who have ten stores in the area between them and at any moment could chose to shift their stores around and start the whole shuffling process all over again.

Rubgy by Ralph Lauren 380 & 390 Bleecker Street, West Village

BLEECKER BROWSING: New RRL Is Open On Bleecker With Another Set For SoHo And Twin Rugby Shops On The Way

We weren't expecting much news from a sultry July Saturday stroll down Bleecker Street, but leave it to Ralph Lauren give us some good material. His retail division has been even busier than we though reconfiguring his network of Manhattan stores. The new RRL store that took over his previous Men's and Women's Collection stores has opened. In fact, the complex remains two separate stores, but at least there seems to logical reasoning behind that. The larger store on the corner of Bleecker and Perry Streets carries the current incarnation of the RRL brand. After a rocky start in the '90s, RRL found its groove when it was recast as a premium denim collection with a rugged western edge. Now freed of its hyper-cluttered space up the street, the sportswear collection can be shopped without the inevitable likelihood of bumping up against other shoppers or the store staff. Not that there isn't clutter —it is Ralph Lauren after all— but there's more room to breathe, and the former women's store's extensive cabinetry has been scaled back and stripped of its pristine white paint. Another welcome discovery is the expansion of the RRL shoe line, which started last year with a couple of sturdy boots made in the U.S.A, and has been expanded to a full, domestically produced collection clearly aimed at Red Wing's and Wolverine's rabid fan base.

But what about the other shop? Since the two side by side spaces have not been joined into a single store, the former men's shop is now where Lauren is debuting a new Italian-made tailored clothing line under RRL's label. Hard finished woolen fabrics have been fashioned into suiting separates with generous 1940's style lapels and deeply pleated trousers. Patterns can be mixed and matched depending on how committed one is to the look. Though the pieces are finished and treated to look like they have been plucked from a vintage store, or better yet, rescued from a decades old trove of dead stock, they don't come cheap, with a suit easily topping $1,200 before you even add the only slightly optional vest. There are dress shirts and ties with the same rumpled patina available as well, along with an abundance of vintage shoes and accessories for those determined to dress just like Elliott Ness or Spencer Tracy. Lauren isn't quite finished with expanding his RRL presentation in the city yet, however. That Collection store at 379 West Broadway in SoHo that he ditched for more evocative digs on Prince Street is set to be converted to an even bigger RRL store. According to the Ralph Lauren website, it's "coming soon".

But that's not all, folks. There's still the smaller space on Bleecker left empty from the RRL move (below). It is going to be made over into a Rugby store along with what used to be the Ralph Lauren children's store down the street, one presumably for each gender. They will be the city's second and third for Lauren's more "collegiate" line after the main location on University place just south of Union Square. They should do quite well on Bleecker with the folks who shop at Gant Rugger and Hilfiger.

So, you see, they have been extra busy moving stuff around over at Polo Retail Headquarters. We almost feel like we will have to check around town to make sure that the rest of his stores are the same as they were a few weeks ago. After all, that NoLita RRL store space is bound to be turned into something else once it moves to West Broadway.

BLEECKER SWITCHEROOS: Marc Jacobs Shuffles His West Village Stores... Again

Last week everyone was comparing Marc Jacobs' duelling press pieces, one sympathetic in WWD, and another surprisingly prickly one in the New York Times.  The focus was on his CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award, which, even the designer admitted was a bit premature for someone under 50. However, the Shophound was paying attention to his stores, and we noticed that he has once again switched around his West Village stores, essentially returning them to the configuration of a couple years ago. His men's store (at right) has returned to its previous Bleecker Street space, once again creating an infuriatingly cramped shopping experience. The Little Marc children's store that most recently live there has moved back to its previous location at the corner of West 4^th and Bank Streets. Diagonally across that intersection, the lovely space with the elegant arched windows that most recently held menswear (below left) has been turned into a Marc by Marc Jacobs women's accessories store, something that was preciously missing from the colony of shops. Of course, one of Jacobs' larger spaces remains devoted to a recently opened bookstore which, while much admired by fashion folk, doesn't seem to make much financial sense at this point.

We're not really sure how all this should be interpreted, beyond a company trying to maximize its various retail properties, but it can't help reinforcing our opinion that Jacobs has long since outgrown the modest shops that currently serve as flagships for his many product lines. Plenty of luxury brands have gone to great trouble to ensure their representation on Bleecker Street —Burberry, Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren— but all of them have much larger stores elsewhere in the city that fully represent their collections. In fact, Lauren just moved his top lines off Bleecker Street entirely in favor of expanding the more casual RRL brand. While Marc Jacobs' main luxury collections are presented in a loftlike location in SoHo, his popular diffusion labels remain cooped up in tiny shoebox sized stores in a location that was at one time charming and offbeat, but becomes ever more mainstream with each passing day. Several months ago, Jacobs president Robert Duffy confirmed a long overdue Madison Avenue flagship store, which looks like it's going to take a while. Last week's Times article suggested that the Marc by Marc Jacobs line has been losing steam in stores like Saks and Barneys (which may or may not be true), so maybe it is time to give that label a needed boost with the kind of larger showcase it better deserves. A prominent, well executed retail store can go a long way to rejuvenate a label in the eyes of shoppers as well as complacent retail clients, but Jacobs' collection of tiny West Village shops, charming and quirky as they are, may not be quite up to that challenge.

MYSTERY SOLVED: Ralph Lauren To Move RRL Into Shuttered Men's & Women's Stores

Just before Memorial Day, Ralph Lauren quietly and swiftly shuttered his Bleecker Street Men's and Women's Collection stores with an unofficial assurance that they would be converted into some other retail concept. Well, speculate no more, the clouded over windows show that the stores will be turned over to the RRL denim and vintage-style sportswear label, as The Shophound had guessed (well, we kind of guessed a bunch of things, so it was really more like multiple choice). It's not a surprising move. His current RRL store is among the most cramped and cluttery on the street. The line has finally started to take off in the past couple of years, so an expansion is more than in order. With his new, larger Collection store on Prince Street, the smaller Bleecker stores hardly seemed like a significant representation of his highest end lines, in the general scheme of things.

We would assume that the two side-by-side stores would be connected to make the most of the poky spaces that typically characterize Bleecker retail, but the new RRL is slated to open by this Summer which technically starts in three weeks. Who can tell if three months is enough time to complete the necessary renovations, but with enough resources —and nobody has resources like Ralph— anything's possible.

Previously:
Why Is Ralph Lauren Ditching Bleecker Street? (6-26-2011)