The Shophound

TOO MUCH TOO SOON?: Is The Meatpacking District's Growth Undermining Its Prestige?

It's been about 10 years since the Meatpacking District fully shifted from, well, actual meat packing along with a few adventurous nightspots to a major designer shopping destination. While fearless restaurants like the much loved Florent, and bars and clubs like Hell, the Lure and Jackie 60 gave the neighborhood a cool and even racy cachet, the retail invasion inaugurated by luxury players Jeffrey, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen eventually swept those pioneering businesses away, along with Western Beef and the butchers.

Next came the renovated High Line park, a couple of glitzy, modern attention-getting hotels, and louder, more mainstream bars and restaurants with "disco brunches" which are setting the stage for a third phase of development that threatens to wipe away the high end designers in favor of more mainstream national brands and chains accustomed to paying higher rents.

Cachet and prestige are fragile things, and just as quickly as the westernmost stretch of 14th Street became an elite shopping area, it may soon become a more populist one. Stella McCartney is already out in favor of SoHo, perhaps thinking that if she is going to be in a busy tourist area, she should take maximum advantage of potential traffic. Alexander McQueen's store is reportedly weighing its options as its lease comes up for renewal. Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent wound up choosing SoHo as well when it came time to place upcoming Downtown boutiques.

Lucrative for its landlords, but less interesting for customers, the new development is vexing for the area's residents, many of whom feel that the small neighborhood has hit the limit for traffic and activity. WWD is reporting that the arrival of the Whitney Museum in 2015 is also pushing up rents in the neighborhood. New York designers and longtime Meatpacking boutique Rubin & Chapelle has just closed its 14th street shop and will reopen shortly in SoHo. Meanwhile, it seems that high end designers are being replaced not by others like them, but less expensive contemporary brands like Alice & Olivia, which is taking over McCartney's store and moving its showroom upstairs as well. While on Madison Avenue, such brands mix easily with more rarefied designers, downtown, it looks like they are pushing them away, Diane von Furstenberg's more gently priced contemporary brand with its prominent corner boutique and headquarters seems to be setting the pace for the neighborhood the way Jeffrey did 10 years ago.

Jeffrey, now owned mostly by Nordstrom, looks like he is staying put, but his new neighbors seem not as likely to attract the sort of folks who are willing to invest in his stratospherically priced goods. UGG is coming soon. Sephora is already there, and what is expected to take root in the area sounds like more stores which are already well represented throughout the city, making the neighborhood a still charming, but no longer an especially unique destination. While this might be great for Scoop, Vince, Intermix, Levi's and all those premium denim shops, it might not be so favorable for the more luxurious Krizia (pictured above), Ports 1961 and Moschino, each a single flagship for its brand in New York and relatively recent arrivals to the neighborhood who may have hoped for things to move in a more pure luxury direction.

The other factor is the possible expansion of the Chelsea Market, the food and office complex which was a major factor in the neighborhood's earlier transformation. Crain's tells us that Owner Jamestown Property wants to keep the momentum going with a 330,000 square foot addition atop the building which would include yet another hotel. Community groups are not happy even though they love the building's food market which features a series of independent culinary businesses (as well as the controversial addition of Anthropologie in a prominent space).

How much is too much is an endless debate that takes place all over the city. Do you miss shopping at Bodum and Stella McCartney on the same block as Western Beef, or are you happier that there's yet another Sephora downtown?

The Meatpacking District's Changing Face by David Moin (WWD)
Chelsea Market tops itself by Theresa Agovino (Crain's)

SALE SLOG: About That Scoop Sale...

There's usually a bit of a lull just before Fashion Week takes hold of the city, so earlier this week, several blogs were abuzz about Scoop's "Cleaning Out Our Closet" Sale which began this morning at the chain's corner store at Washington and West 14th Streets. Familiar shoppers will be aware that the lower level of that particular Scoop Street location is usually a clearance department anyway where everything is sold at 50% off the most recent price, but the addition of last season's Fall goods should spruce up the selection, right?

So we stopped by this morning, and saw a few new bits and pieces that were obviously recently transferred over from Scoop's regular locations including lots of women's and men's shoes, but by and large, everything looked awfully familiar. In going over the men's clothes, we noticed an unusual amount of linen shirts and lightweight trousers. There was a whole rack of swimwear, and a stack of Gant by Michael Bastian shirts that were from Fall 2010 (always easy to tell since he makes seasonal labels). So where was the rest of the good stuff? We walked a few steps down the block to the Scoop Men's store and found several sale racks full of Fall merchandise at 40% off the ticket price —still a pretty good deal, right, but not as good as 50%. Then we noticed some Mason's pants that we had just seen in the corner store, and a Hartford shirt, Paul Smith boots and DSquared sneakers, and a Rag & Bone plaid flannel shirt that were all, apparently, sitting in both stores, at two different prices. Confusing? Maybe just sloppy? Definitely annoying, though, that most of the best stuff is still hanging in the regular store. We are assuming that the 40% off signs were an oversight, since even the website is offering 50% off sale goods, but who can tell, and why should we have to ask? Get it together, Scoop. Who wants to shop in two places for the same sale?

FOOT FETISH: Louboutin Men's Store To Hit Meatpacking District This Spring

Hey guys! Not enough thousand-dollar sneakers in your life? Are you also dying to show off your profligate shoe expenditures to your friends by flashing the red soles of your overdecorated loafers? Well, cool your heels for just a few more months because Christian Louboutin is opening his second men's boutique in the world sometime this Spring. It will be located on Washington Street between Horatio and Gansevoort Streets, just a stone's throw from his already popular downtown women's store. Just think how convenient it will be when your girlfriend/beard can go shop for her own excessively embellished platform hooker shoes while you try on your precious slippers. Then you can both skip down the cobblestones to Beaumarchais to show off your flashy new shoes to all the kids at the Eurotrash Disco Brunch!

Oh, Springtime just can't come soon enough!

Christian Louboutin to Open Men's Store in NYC (WWD)

MOVIE MAGIC: H&M And Sony Team Up To Promote "The Girl With the Dragon tattoo"

We can't really encourage you to run down to West 14th Street to H&M's Blink-and-you'll-miss-it Dragon Tattoo Collection by Trish Summerville pop-up store because it'll be over by the end of today. We have to wonder a little bit why H&M would go to such expense for a temporary store that doesn't even take advantage of the weekend shopping traffic in the Meatpacking District, and then we remembered that it probably didn't cost H&M a dime. Our guess is that Sony Pictures which produced the film "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" footed the bill which was probably a drop in the bucket of a presumed blockbuster's promotional budget.

Still, it's too bad if you missed it, because Sony/H&M did a more than respectable job turning whatever raw space was there into a grungy, gloomy Stockholm city corner/cybercafé (cybercafé, what a quaint concept in the age of the iPhone). In fact, the setting is far more interesting than the special capsule collection inspired by the movie's urchin-like central character, Lisbeth Salander. Mannequins throughout the shop are fitted with not-iPad tablet devices (by Sony!) that alternate showing snippets of the film and serving as incredibly unflattering little electronic mirrors, and racks are suspended by rugged chains for a dungeonlike effect.

The real winner here is costume designer Trish Summerville, who otherwise would be working in relatively anonymity behind the scenes, and now gets her name on the label of a line that will be sold in H&M stores worldwide with Sony picking up a big promotional tab. The actual clothes, motorcycle jackets, jeans, hoodies, biker leggings and Rick Owens-y draped knits in lots of black and gray are not unlike what lots of New York women have been wearing for years (think of a scruffier version of styleblogger favorite Elle senior style editor Kate Lanphear), so they should sell nicely and have some life beyond any mass inclination women might have to dress like the film's slightly scary character.

Of course, if the movie flops when opens next week, those "Dragon Tattoo" displays are going to look a little sad, but for now it's all promotional buildup with breathless anticipation.

Dragon Tattoo Collection by Trish Summerville available at H&M stores now.

POP-UP ALERT: GQ Teams With Park & Bond For A Meatpacking District Holiday Shop

There may be a dearth of menswear on the West side, but downtown, it's a different story. Starting tomorrow, GQ will be teaming up with nascent men's online retailer Park & Bond for a ten-day pop-up shop in the Meatpacking District. The site and the magazine have already been collaborating on a series of monthly picks since Gilt Groupe's latest venture launched this past Fall, so this is a quick move from online retailer to freestanding store, even if it's temporary and has a little help from an iconic magazine. Whether or not there will be a permanent Park & Bond store sometime in the future remains to be determined, but, for now, the temporary store will carry the monthly “GQ Selects” items as well as GQ’s “Best Stuff of the Year,” as featured in the December issue. Therer will also be other merchandise plucked from Park & Bond's impressive roster of men's designers and brands including outerwear, apparel, denim, accessories, footwear, watches (new and vintage), tech and grooming products from labels such as A.PC., Common Projects, Etro, Filson, GANT, Jack Spade, Lacoste, Mackintosh, Oliver Peoples, Orlebar Brown, Paul Smith, Simon Spurr, Thom Browne and Vilebrequin. For tricky gift giving, the store will have a special group of gifts under $50 to make your Holiday Shopping that much easier. Various other special events are also scheduled throughout the 10-day duration of the store
Oh yeah, we hear they'll be serving drinks, too, which should be enough to get pretty much anyone down there posthaste.

GQ at Park & Bond 414 West 14th Street from December 8th-18th 11am to 6pm Wednesdays-Fridays, 11am to 7pm on Saturdays and 11am to 5pm on Sundays, closed Monday and Tuesday between Ninth Avenue and Washington Street, Meatpacking District

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Marni Is Closing The Gap On Gansevoort

Yesterday we noted that the location Marni has chosen for its third New York store had been uniquely modified by its original tenant Yohji Yamamoto to separate the selling floor from the back office and stockrooms in a striking but likely impractical way (seen at right thanks to Google Street View's conveniently outdated images of the site). That may be one of the reasons why it took so long to re-lease the space at the edge of the the popular Meatpacking District after all of New York's Yohji stores were abruptly closed some time ago.

We needn't have worried that Marni was going to wind up with an awkward space. When we found ourselves walking on Gansevoort Street yesterday afternoon, it was clear that Marni and its landlord are reversing Yohji Yamamoto's inventive but tricky architectural alterations which will, most importantly recapture many square feet of selling space that for a time had been generaously (perhaps too generously) relinquished to pedestrians on a not particularly crowded street. When Marni opens next month, it will have substantially more spacious if more conventional layout.

Previously:
Marni To Take Gansevoort For A Third NY Store

COMING SOON: Marni To Take Gansevoort For A Third NY Store

Italian label Marni continues to increase its presence in New York with the announcement that it will be taking over the 2,500 square foot store at 1 Gansevoort Street that briefly held a Yohji Yamamoto boutique. The store is on the pointy block where Gansevoort Street veers off from West 13th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenues. Adidas Y-3, Catherine Malandrino, Calypso St. Barths and Andrew Buckler are all steps away. The new boutique is set to open sometime next month and will feature, along with women's and men's lines, the U.S. debut of Marni's children's line for all those parents who long to spend hundreds of dollars on clothes that will be outgrown in six months. The store features an unusual design adapted for the previous occupant which separated the main selling space completely from the part of the building which holds backstock and offices —a striking element that could prove especially impractical in adverse weather, but makes for a light filled, airy ambiance inside the store.

Marni to Open Boutique in Meatpacking District (WWD)

TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS: Dagny & Barstow Defies Murphy's Law To Open On Gansevoort Street... For Now

Ever had someone suggest you should open a store, or a bakery, or a restaurant like it was just something easy anyone could do? Emily Titelman and Meredith Blank have been chronicling their ongoing experiences of trying to get their boutique Dagny & Barstow open for RACKED. It reads like an extended treatise on the effects of Murphy's Law, and yet the persistent storekeepers soldier on, unfazed, battling community boards, Landmarks commissions, lazy utility companies and any number of construction permit processes with uncommon good humor, knowing that one day the store of their dreams would come together, just not as quickly as they had hoped.

Originally meant to open this Fall on the Bowery in a space that once housed a nightclub owned by Lenny Kravitz, Dagny & Barstow is now open in a pop-up location clear across town at 64 Gansevoort Street. While construction presumably continues at the Bowery location, Titelman and Blank had ordered Fall merchandise back in January that needed to be sold somewhere, so the resourceful pair found a temporary spot to tide them over until their store's permanent home is ready. Click over to Racked for their list of potential disasters that every aspiring retailer should be preopared for, and then go back and read the rest of their Opening Diaries.

How Dagny & Barstow, Planned for the Bowery, Wound Up in the Meatpacking District, Opening Diary Archives (RACKED)

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK SPRING 2012 Day 2 Menswear In The Open Air With Nautica & Andrew Buckler

Click all images for a larger view in a new window

As The Shophound was enduring the bottleneck on West 63^rd Street to get into the Empire Hotel for the Nautica show, we found ourselves in front of a pair of female Fashion Weekers who were debating why they should be going to this show versus another one somewhere else. Finally, one of them took on a "let me tell you how it is" tone and said to her cohort, "Look, we are going to see plenty of skinny girls in dresses this week. Right now, we are going to see hot guys in bathing suits." That seemed to settle things.

Not to downplay Nautica's impressive ability to present a handsome collection of updated classic sportswear season after season that consistently delivers big numbers at department stores all over America, but part of the enduring appeal of the brand's Fashion Week presentations is its flawless model casting. Over the past few seasons, the label has assembled an all-star team of regulars like Garrett Neff, Clint Mauro, Chad White, Oraine Barrett and Josh Wald while adding a few fast rising up-and-comers each season (Why, hello Cory Bond [above, center] and Brian Shimansky). People will linger at the presentation, enjoying the open bar, and a few will just stare, slack jawed at the guys whom they usually see cruising by on a runway for only a few seconds at a time. It's sort of like the men's equivalent of when Gianni Versace used to pack his runway with every available supermodel, just with more testosterone.

The guys were lined up on the hotel's rooftop pool deck, and we were a little concerned that the hot still-Summer sun might fry everyone, but the light awnings kept everyone surprisingly cool. Even though some models were clad in layers of windbreakers and sweatshirts, we saw no sign of melting opn the platforms. Those of us who could tear ourselves away were rewarded for our attendance with a smart pair of Nautica aviator sunglasses.

Our next stop was Gansevoort Street where Andrew Buckler had planned another outdoor show on the cobblestones just a few blocks west of his Meatpacking District boutique. Again, as the afternoon got warmer we were afraid we would simply spontaneously combust in direct sunlight before the show began, but one of the neighborhood's famous, huge awnings kept most of the crowd comfortably in the shade. Eventually Buckler's models emerged onto the street walking in a formation that gave everyone a good look at the line which ranged from trimmed down classics to goth-y draped layers all set to a retro-techno soundtrack featuring Prodigy and Fluke. Unfortunately, the exceptionally large "runway" area made the pace of the show drag just a bit more than it needed to, though the "army of models" finale (below) is always a crowd pleaser.

Earlier, we did make our daily visit to the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tents for Luca Luca. There we saw our second Housewife, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, looking leathery in a coral pantsuit. Whitney Port also made an appearance to remind everyone she still exists even though The City no longer does, along with Ashley Tisdale, Jamie Lynn Sigler and Joanna Garcia forming a celebrity contingent of medium wattage at best. As we watched models in the clothes go by, we were thinking that it had been a while since we had gone to a Luca Luca show. So anyway....

It's worth noting that we have already had to ditch some shows so we could have the time to actually write posts. The constant shuttling up and downtown doesn't help matters much, but we'll have a full list of apologies and grievances when Fashion Week is finished, so that'll be something we can all look forward to!

SHOE NEWS: Nicholas Kirkwood Plans Meatpacking District Debut

Anyone worried that the Meatpacking District would lose some cachet when Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen relocate can rest easy. Inventive shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood will be opening his first U.S. flagship store at 807 Washington Street early next year. The 1,500 square foot store will sit somewhere between Gansevoort and Horatio Streets directly across the street from what will eventually become the new Whitney Museum of American Art. It will be Kirkwood's second store, his first in the U.S., and will feature shoes that seem to defy logic and physics like the one pictured at left, as well as collections created exclusively for designer labels Erdem and Rodarte.

While there is not yet an abundance of shoe stores in the meatpacking district, the London based designer will be in good company with Christian Louboutin, Iris and the footwear bonanza that is the shoe department at Jeffrey mere blocks away. Shoe mavens will now have their first reason to count down the days until next Spring.

Nicholas Kirkwood to Open First U.S.-Based Flagship (WWD)