Looking for something offhand, a little bit preppy and offbeat, all at the same time?
A girl could stock her entire wardrobe from some of New York’s contemporary boutiques, which are branching into the wholesale business with namesake lines. Store owners are drawing on their years of experience with customers — and, in some cases, their design backgrounds — to create simple, wearable, well-priced items that are still fashion-forward.
“We try to home in on a particular trend and do the best version we can,” said Louis Terline, co-owner with Jeff Madelena of Oak, which has an online shop and two freestanding stores in Brooklyn. They started with skinny-leg jeans and shirts for women and men in their own stores last year, and are expanding with a broader wholesale collection that will include dresses for fall 2007. Wholesale prices start at $42 for shirts and go up to $82 for dresses. Several stores have placed orders, including Blackbird in Seattle and Jonathan & Olivia in Vancouver.
“It helps increase the margins a little bit,” Terline said, “and it helps with brand awareness for the store. The more people who are wearing your logo around town, the better.” Both men had previous design experience.
Opening Ceremony, the downtown store most famous for bringing Topshop merchandise from London to New York, also is getting deeper into wholesale. The store, which was host to the pop-up shop for the Proenza Scholer-Target collaboration, has been wholesaling select items for three seasons, but spring 2007 marks its first full apparel collection. Also new for spring is a line of shoes for women and men that focuses on streamlined, low-cut flats and oxfords in navy and wheat. More than 50 stores will carry the Opening Ceremony label this spring, including Barneys New York, which will have the men’s collection, and Satine, American Rag and Hejfina. Colette in Paris has picked up the shoes.
Women’s clothing starts at about $30 wholesale and goes to as much as $600 for a coat.
“I like to call it basics plus,” said co-owner Humberto Leon. “For the women’s line, I think we push it a little more and play around with the shapes, whether it’s volume or body-conforming pieces. But, ultimately, everything is very easy. They all immediately go on you with not too much explanation.”
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Neither Leon nor his business partner, Carol Lim, had previous design experience, but both their mothers sew and helped with patterns and handknitting. All but the denim is made in New York and the shoes come from Portugal.
Last season, No. 6, a mostly vintage store in New York owned by stylists Karin Bereson and Morgan Yakus, sold a mix of new and old dresses to Barneys New York. For spring 2007, the two are expanding their contemporary offerings with more shapes and a limited run of 20 numbered pieces per print. The fabrics are vintage, and the dresses retail for $265 to $350.
“It was a complete accident,” Yakus said. “We were making things for the store. Girls started wearing them, other girls saw them and it snowballed.”
The dresses are one-size-fits-all, and may be worn for day or evening.
“They are things we want to wear that we feel other girls would enjoy wearing,” Yakus said.
Barneys Japan and Steven Alan in New York will carry the line this spring, and the store would like to pick up London and Paris accounts, she said. However, the intent is to keep the line small because of limited availability of the fabrics. Yakus said she hoped to find wider distribution, possibly to a department store,
for the store’s line of clog boots, which was launched last year.
The New York store probably best known for its own line is Steven Alan, which has been making its own label since 1999 and wholesaling since 2001. The women’s styles — mostly shirts and dresses in men’s wear cottons — appear “innocent and sexy,” said designer and store owner Steven Alan. His brand now accounts for more than half the revenues of the company, which operates four stores in New York and a multibrand showroom, and has more than 150 retail accounts. Retailers include Barneys, which added the women’s line for fall 2006, Louis Boston, Ron Herman, Fred Segal and Selfridges.
“The idea behind making our own stuff was just to have product in the store that acted as an integrator with other lines, and things I couldn’t find that as a buyer I wanted,” Alan said.
Other New York boutiques that have recently added their own wholesale lines include Scoop, Resurrection, What Comes Around Goes Around and Zachary’s Smile. Scoop’s ballet flats, bags and apparel will be sold in 150 stores this spring.
Resurrection is doing a line of evening dresses, but even these are simpler and less expensive than the store’s vintage gowns. Styles are short and architectural, fun party dresses in bright jewel-tone silks.