Last Friday afternoon, Kim Kassel and Lizzie Tisch basked in the glow of a successful event. Tisch radiated tony casual — literally — in ripped jeans, Manolos and a high-sparkle plaid faux-work shirt by Ashish. “I’m a sucker for a sequin,” she said. Save for her Saint Laurent shoes, Kassel was all-out Courrèges in a short, structured dress and cropped leather jacket. She sipped Champagne.
The partners in the luxury retail venture Suite 1521 were nearing the end of a nontraditional selling season, one that started in January with pre-fall and extends through early June when they will take orders on three resort collections: Preen, Roksanda and Mugler. They call each designer session an “event,” the concept derived in part from the trunk show. Designers or their representatives bring their full collections to Suite 1521 for one- or two-day sessions, usually during the wholesale selling period. They meet with clients whose orders are put into the season’s production. Houses with available stock can offer that as well.
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Kassel and Tisch spent the previous two days engaged in selling Johnson Hartig’s Libertine, the off-beat collection of mostly repurposed vintage items that the designer appropriates and then jewels, embroiders, writes on and otherwise distorts in a manner that fuses eccentricity with chic. By nature of its one-off focus, Libertine’s event differed from most Suite 1521 selling sessions; it was primarily a stock sale, though Hartig added a small range of sweaters for broader production.
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Despite strong sales, plenty of feisty, colorful merch still occupied the racks lining the perimeter of Suite’s primary selling space, a graciously scaled salon decorated with a girly modern vibe. Artwork by Tisch’s cousin, Jessica Lichtenstein, changes frequently, creating a gallerylike aura and a point of interest for returning clients. A central seating area anchors the space with a pair of sensuous tufted sofas (each with a big pillow printed with 1521) bracketing a dark wood Rizzo cocktail table with inset glass. On the company Web site, it sprouts deep-hued orchids; day-to-day, it’s filled with a bushel or so of mixed candy — York Peppermint Patties, Milky Ways, KitKat bars — procured in bulk online. These women made shopping enjoyment one of their founding principles, and if that means celebrating the occasional caloric indulgence along with the sartorial, so be it.
Nearly two years into their enterprise based on a mutual love of fashion that skews arcane and the belief that retail innovation need not be limited to digital endeavors, the women are confident in their development. The business is small but growing steadily, and broke even in 2014. This year, revenues are trending up considerably and are projected to exceed $10 million at some point in 2016. Growth plans include taking the Suite 1521 concept on the road — the partners have already tested Palm Beach, Fla. — and increasing membership via aggressive marketing initiatives and third-party partnerships.
Tisch and Kassel founded Suite 1521 on a clubby premise: Annual dues of $500 would open access to a broad range of interesting, ascendant fashion and accessories designers underrepresented or not available at all in New York. Their member/client roster started at a mostly local 300 and has grown to 1,200, with 95 percent retention. The demographic expanded so that 10 percent of clients now hail from outside New York and as far away as Australia.
Robust repeat business has led to a shift in the membership fee, now a one-time-only payment. The average sale per client per event is $4,000; the largest single client sale to date, $65,000. The partners’ obsessive service orientation stresses personal relationships. To that end, they refer to “Giles” [Deacon], “Mary” [Katrantzou] “Peter” [Pilotto] and others whose lines they feature the old-fashioned way — as people rather than brands.
Almost immediately, Tisch and Kassel garnered strong feedback from vendors, approaching mostly small-business designers with little or no exposure in New York and across the U.S. Suite 1521 would provide entrée to the market, affording designers direct exposure to an impressive client base. They would reap not only sales but also direct feedback on what works and doesn’t work on the real-women-with-money types who pay retail and have certain requirements. So far, the plan has worked.
Not all of the brands within the Suite universe are fashion newcomers. A recent event featured a trio of Chanel’s Métiers d’Art houses owned via its Paraffection subsidiary. While the Maison Michel hats and Causse gloves were a tough sell, clients went mad for Barrie Cashmere, which will make a return for spring 2016.
Courrèges, too, had a positive introduction. In the midst of a plan to reestablish itself as a major force, the brand visited Suite 1521 in February. “You have a fantastic opportunity to get in touch with clients,” Jacques Bungert, a co-owner of the brand, said at the time. “It’s an opportunity to show the whole collection to the right target in a very exclusive way….For us, Suite 1521 was the right entry to New York, which is a key market to us. Obviously, people who know the brand understand the brand. [But] we are at the point in revival where you need to show that this is the new Courrèges. It’s definitely Courrèges, but it’s the new Courrèges. You have to understand it, you have to translate it, you have to express it.”
As for the client-house relationship, several clients at the event suggested that adding a zipper to a particular dress would make it considerably more wearer-friendly. Done. Some designers will add sleeves to a look when doing so won’t compromise the design. Often, clients request an item in a fabric or color used elsewhere in the collection. But the most frequently requested modification: “A little longer, please.”
Clients love the access. “I’m someone who has very strong opinions about my own fashion sense,” said Randi Levine, who relocated to the West Village after raising her children on Long Island. “For me to be able to go in on my own time and meet with the designer or the representative, to see the full breadth of the line and be able to make the choices that suit me and curate my own wardrobe, has made a huge difference. It’s so much fun for me. It brings me closer to the creative process.”
Almost inevitably, launching a business presents surprises, sometimes unsettling suppositions. While the average age of Suite clients is late 30s/early 40s, the partners do have customers as young as their late 20s, while Tisch’s grandmother and her friends also shopped voraciously during the Palm Beach event. Given the collections offered, most clients have an adventurous streak — some unexpectedly so. “The single biggest surprise for us, the client I would not have thought would be interested in any of the designers we work with are some of our most fashion-forward clients,” Kassel said.
That’s a nice way of saying that older customers are buying a great deal more advanced fashion than the partners anticipated (to that end, the ability to lengthen silhouettes is key). Said Tisch, “I find it so amazing that these women [many upward of 60], who 15 years ago were wearing Chanel or Armani pantsuits now don’t care as much. They want to look cool, fashionable, interesting.” Conversely, she added, many in the younger range, through the mid-30s, either “want to wear exactly what their friends are wearing,” or work in corporate professions and “don’t have much of a choice to be walking around in sparkles.”
Some designers, including Katrantzou, Pilotto and Deacon, have emerged as early bestsellers, and Tisch and Kassel have been quick to reenlist them; Deacon brought both his ready-to-wear and demi-couture collections. Recent first-timers who performed powerfully include Bouchra Jarrar and Andrew Gn. Bouchra Jarrar resonated with the customer who wants “that really tailored, simple [look],” Kassel said. “She wants that Balenciaga feel, and we don’t have anything that feels like that. Bouchra’s not really carried anywhere here right now and we sold her really well.”
Andrew Gn proved something of a surprise find. “We happened to see him when we were in Paris in March and he asked if we could get it organized quickly,” Tisch said. They made it happen, and the designer and the firm’s director, Horlin Du Houx, “were over the moon with the sales, far beyond what they expected to do.”
While the presentation of complete, underexposed collections is a defining platform of Suite 1521, plenty of curation goes into the big-picture as Tisch and Kassel try to avoid obvious “crossover” among their labels. “Even with Mary and Peter, they developed in different directions,” Kassel said. “It can be the same client, but they don’t feel like they’re walking in and getting the same digital print twice. Obviously, at some point you may have some crossover, but we’re trying to give the client something different. There’s nothing that looks like Libertine,” she said, motioning around the room.
Though division of labor has been organic, it is nevertheless clear. “Lizzie’s the finder, I’m the closer,” Kassel said. Translation: Tisch handles discovery, trolling the Internet and searching stores, but turns prospective names over to Kassel to make the contact. Kassel handles the schedule, while anything involving a dollar sign falls to Tisch. “I’m not allowed,” Kassel said. “I will make a mistake.”
The schedule for spring 2016, confirmed but for two spots, starts on Sept. 24 with a pairing of Rodarte and Spinelli Kilcollin. The lineup ranges from brands with considerable name recognition — Prabal Gurung, Antonia Berardi, Paco Rabanne —to Novis, a small New York-based collection Tisch said resonates with young women who need clothes for work and “have a wedding every weekend.”
Finding the right moment for enlistment of an untested resource has proven the “trickiest thing” about the designer search. “You don’t want them to be too established, but you don’t want them to be too new,” Tisch said. “There’s the sense that if it’s so new, nobody has heard of it. You need to have some kind of buzz about the brand. But it’s a very fine line. At any moment, [a collection] could explode and you want to be there first.”