After more than 20 years in business and 50 shops, Sigrid Olsen finally has a Manhattan store.
The approximately 4,000-square-foot store, which opened last month in SoHo, rolls out a design concept that will become a signature employed in all Sigrid Olsen units.
“This means everything to me,” Olsen said. “The SoHo store really is the first store that expresses the artistic side of the brand.”
New York-based architectural firm Pompei A.D. LLC worked with Olsen to conceive a residential metaphor for the shop at 411 West Broadway. The checkout area is the kitchen, complete with a refrigerator with water for customers. Basic clothing is housed in an artist’s space with studio-inspired shelves and lighting, and the fitting rooms — which each feature a stencil Olsen designed — represent the bedroom.
The shop also lifts details from Olsen’s own seaside Massachusetts residence, like the bleached wood floors, and it features Olsen’s artwork and vacation photos. “The idea was to make it feel like Sigrid just left,” the designer explained.
Olsen, who founded her better brand in 1984 and sold it to Liz Claiborne Inc. in 1999, had harbored a more personal vision for her stores since the first opened in August 2003 in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
“This idea took a while to incubate,” she said. “We opened a few stores that were executed impeccably, but they felt somewhat sterile, like there was some kind of emptiness, something missing. All of our stores are perfectly lovely, but they don’t have that sense of discovery. The SoHo store puts the brand in the context of a street location, so it’s not just a cookie-cutter mall store.”
Finding the right architectural partner to actualize her ideas took time, but when the weaver-turned-fashion-designer met sculptor-turned-architect Ron Pompei, principal, chief executive officer and creative director of Pompei A.D., about a year and a half ago, the two began developing the concept.
“Sigrid is of course an artist, and it was clear to me her business was an extension of her creativity,” Pompei said.
It also took time to find the right location. They settled on a space built in the late 1800s for light industrial use that became a gallery and then a Country Road store, before Sigrid Olsen took the two-story space.
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“There was so much art in SoHo, and now there is so much fashion,” Pompei said. “Sigrid has a certain cachet aligned with her that fits well with SoHo — she is an artist doing fashion — and she represents the merger of the artistic culture that is rooted here and the more commercial side that has arisen here since then.”
Pompei and Olsen are working on creating a package to renovate existing Sigrid Olsen stores to apply the same residential feeling and personal touches they achieved in SoHo. For future locations, they plan to use the same concept, but tweak it for local environments. For example, the recently opened International Plaza unit in Tampa, Fla., will extend the home metaphor concept by welcoming customers through a porch-like entrance with sliding French doors.
“The day of the cookie cutter is long gone,” Pompei said. “I think it is very important to modify the store as you go to different places and neighborhoods. Just as Sigrid would respond to different areas of her life differently, we will make these stores unique.”
After the brand went through a rough period starting last fall, Olsen said the new store is getting positive feedback that tells her the fits and product are back on target.
“We tried some new things, we responded to requests to make the line more contemporary. We just got a little off track trying to be something other people said they wanted, instead of what we really are. Now we have gone back to our roots,” Olsen said. “The time is right to open this store. The product is where it needs to be. When you are in New York, you can’t make a false move because everyone is watching.”