IT’S HIS KIND OF TOWN: CHICAGO GETS BIGGEST LAUREN STORE IN WORLD
CHICAGO — When it comes to flagships, size does matter.
Especially for Ralph Lauren, whose stable of enviable lifestyles continues to expand.
The most fully realized evocation of Ralph’s many worlds can be seen at 750 North Michigan Avenue here, where the largest Polo Ralph Lauren flagship in the world — a four-level, 37,000-square-foot unit — opens today.
The flagship represents Lauren’s new emporium concept, where all the designer’s distinct brands for the first time are housed under the same roof.
The new store — with almost twice as much space as the 20,000-square-foot Rhinelander Mansion flagship on Madison Avenue at 72nd Street in New York — showcases an extensive array of products, including a women’s equestrian shop and the new RLX competition-level, sports-specific activewear and footwear for men and women.
“What we’re building [in Chicago] is a whole concept, from the largeness of the store to the expanded women’s wear collection to the expanded children’s wear,” said Ralph Lauren in a telephone interview from London. “We’ve expanded everything. I’m doing everything on a larger scale. Basically, it’s the amount of space we’ve devoted to all the products to give them a strong positioning. The whole concept of this store is very major.”
Lauren seems to have found an enthusiastic audience here, where everyone from Lake Forest matrons to Lake Shore Drive socialites admires his special breed of classicism.
“Chicago is a very important place, and growing,” Lauren said. “I can feel an energy coming out of Chicago. People there have style and money and taste, and I think that audience is there wanting to get the right things. I think that’s why our positioning there hasn’t been full enough. We sell a lot of different stores, but we never made the presentation there that we should have.”
“There is a certain level of appreciation for Ralph’s esthetic here, maybe more than any other place in the country,” said Peter Rizzo, president of Polo Retail. “The Chicago business has been exceptional. Ralph has been in the Chicago market for 11 years. The women’s business is 50 percent ahead of last year. The small store had double-digit growth this year over last year.”
Rizzo was referring to the original 9,000-square-foot Polo Ralph Lauren flagship at 980 North Michigan Avenue, which closed Saturday.
Although Polo officials declined to project a volume for the new store, George Rosenbaum, chief executive officer of Leo J. Shapiro & Associates, a market research firm based here, said the store would have to do $12 million to $16 million to break even, and he expects the company is projecting an annual volume of $20 million to $25 million.
The new Polo flagship at the corner of Chicago Avenue has a limestone Georgian facade. It is the first store Lauren has built from the ground up. With its signature blue awnings, the store, which took two years to complete, looks more like a boutique hotel than a boutique.
“What’s interesting about this store is building it from scratch,” Lauren said. “It will hopefully become a landmark in Chicago. Most stores that open up are just stores. It becomes a landmark in the sense that we’ve gone to the effort of building a mansion and building a major piece of architecture.”
The flagship opens at an auspicious time for Polo Retail. In addition to taking control of the Beverly Hills flagship by buying out Jerry Magnin, Lauren is opening an 8,000-square-foot resort store in Palm Beach, Fla., next week and a 40,000-square-foot flagship at One New Bond Street in London in March.
And the company is tossing around ideas for a 55,000-square-foot space in New York’s SoHo. According to Rizzo, it will be an updated emporium unit.
Lauren said he was looking for space for a second store in Paris.
“I have a store on the Place de la Madeleine,” he said. “We’ve had that store for about 10 years. It’s smaller than [the one in] Chicago, but it’s a beautiful store. I think we’re going to be expanding in Europe. I’m looking for all kinds of concepts.”
He’s also considering freestanding concepts for a number of growing categories of business.
“Sometimes something outgrows its space,” Lauren said. “I think we are growing, and there are categories we have to rethink as to how to present them properly. I would say the children’s business is very strong now and very important. Probably, at some point, we’re going to have to make freestanding children’s stores.
“If we start to see there’s not enough space to do something properly, you have to then say, OK, this can be a freestanding business, and we’ll expand other things,” Lauren continued. “That’s basically how and why your business changes, because categories become important.”
The accessories business is another category that ultimately will need more space, he said.
“Every business has to have its legs and grow,” said Lauren. “My women’s business is growing tremendously, so I have to think of how to expand that. It’s always a constant rethinking of space. If you’re a live business, you’re outgrowing your space. The reason we did the Chicago store in that space is we’re going to catch up. Sometimes a store can get too big, also. It’s constantly paying attention to the beat of the consumer and your own beat.”
For now, however, the store here is big enough to contain all Lauren’s ambitions.
Inside, the setting is reminiscent of an old English hotel, with a grand staircase, French polished mahogany paneling, coffered ceilings and hundreds of paintings of horses, hounds and hunting scenes.
“A large group of creative people searched the world for that stuff,” Rizzo said. Photos in the men’s area are from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s family albums; much of the art throughout the store is from England and France. Other works are from the Chicago Historical Society.
“Ralph’s whole esthetic blends so beautifully here,” Rizzo said, gazing at the ground floor sportswear area.
Indeed, no detail seems to have been overlooked. The room is filled with club chairs upholstered in a tartan plaid; the walls are covered in red cavalry twill, “the purest hunting red,” said Charles Fagan, senior vice president of men’s product merchandising for Polo Retail. Even chandeliers wear matching red lamp shades.
The first floor is designed for serious hunting and gathering. Old shop cases from the Twenties and Thirties, found in England and Ireland, contain vintage picture frames from turn-of-the-century Birmingham, Ala.; Art Deco candlesticks and clocks; vintage watches, and jewelry.
“Some of the cases were made from sections of bars that we recut and refinished,” Fagan said.
The ground floor also contains men’s shoes and luggage.
The building’s floors decrease in size in ascending order, so the placement of men’s on the second floor — which is 20 percent larger than the third-floor women’s level — is significant.
However, Rizzo said, Lauren is giving his women’s business a big push.
“He’s showing the world it’s not just a men’s apparel company,” Rizzo said. “Men’s is so mature. It had single-digit increases this year.”
Still, the commitment to men’s wear is evident in the ornate Purple Label room, where a display of formal apparel is played dramatically against red velvet drapes.
“This is effectively our Purple Label store,” Rizzo said. “We have furnishings, tailored clothing, sportswear, cashmere sweaters and coats. This is the destination in Chicago for the Purple Label customer.
“Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue [also on North Michigan Avenue] have it, but they have a much smaller presentation, and it’s not as eclectically organized,” Rizzo added.
Asked how the new flagship would affect sales of Lauren merchandise at the other stores, Rizzo said, “I think this is a new customer. There are people that want to shop in this kind of environment and be taken in by the theater, and others who don’t.”
When the company opened the Rhinelander Mansion, there were similar concerns, he said, but they turned out to be unfounded.
“It gave Ralph a greater presence and it gives retailers like Neiman Marcus direction,” said Rizzo.
Other rooms on the men’s wear floor are devoted to quintessential tailored clothing and sportswear, such as Harris tweed suitings, suede pants and wide herringbone jackets. There is a tack shop for riding accoutrements such as oilcloth jackets, and a dress navy room merchandised around the navy-and-gray theme with peacoats and low-slung flannel pants. Polo Sport, Sportsman and RLX are housed in a separate room, and there’s a boys’ shop decorated with local university pennants and antique model airplanes.
An area for women’s Polo Sport, Sportswoman and RLX is on the third floor. Asked if the company would consider opening a separate store for Polo Sport — to rival the 10,000-square-foot Madison Avenue unit — Rizzo said, “We’re investigating all individual concepts for retail expansion, but the store would be lacking if it didn’t have a representation.
“We’ll decide on where to take it from here as we become more legitimate in the technical area,” he said, referring to RLX.
“There’s talk about doing a home furnishings stand-alone store,” Rizzo said. “It’s a long way off.”
On the third floor, the women’s Collection salon is decorated with elegant chrome and nubuck furniture, creamy white walls and crystal chandeliers. To hear Rizzo tell it, the Collection represents a turning point for the designer.
“This particular collection — fall 1998 — is the beginning of a whole new era for Ralph in women’s,” Rizzo said. “The numbers for fall are way ahead by double digits throughout the entire chain. The winter white was so powerful.
“The whole concept of this collection was revolutionary,” he added. “There is a certain international classicism about it that enables him to compete with other international design houses.”
Eveningwear includes a long, strapless cashmere bias-cut dress in gray or winter white for $6,300; a long, black sleeveless chiffon tank dress with an overlay of beaded netting for $6,400, and a winter-white, long cashmere cable dress for $2,250.
An area just outside the Collection room houses the Collection Classics, which are being expanded to include more luxury knitwear, cashmere and woven wool shirts.
“This is more about tailored, artisan-quality fabrics,” Rizzo said.
The women’s activewear area is housed in a long bright room, with Polo Sport and ski in the center, and Sportswoman, the new Northwoods collection and the equestrian line in a smaller, adjacent room. For fall there, the store is showing a long, sueded shearling duffel coat from Polo Sport for $4,000; a wool and silk Northwoods sweater for $250; classic jodhpurs for $450, and a black leather riding coat for $2,175. Equestrian also will be featured on the ground floor.
“The whole women’s sport area has enormous potential,” Rizzo said. “The sky’s the limit.”
“Sportswoman was new for fall,” he said. “That’s being expanded in a much bigger way. It was limited to one to 1 1/2 deliveries a season. Now there will be two to three deliveries a season.”
An accessories salon features shoes, handbags, belts, small leather accessories and even a few saddles.
“You’ll see a bigger and better presentation of Collection accessories here. For the first time, in women’s shoes you’ll see a lot of contemporary ideas,” Rizzo said, pointing to zebra-print boots, gray flannel flats and a clutch made of printed pony skin.
The Ralph label also has a showcase. The younger collection, which features long skirts and cropped sweaters, is housed in a room with its alter ego, Collection Classics dressy suitings.
The fourth floor, devoted to home, is where consumers perhaps can have the biggest vicarious thrill. Here are all the goods for cocooning in style, from Southport beds, inspired by Fifties wooden station wagons, to White Label 350-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
The Penthouse collection is a set piece featuring a channeled leather bed, mink bedspread, brown suede chairs and zebra-print ottoman. Notice how men’s clothing textiles are used for home furnishings in cabled cashmere pillows and wool chalk-stripe shams.
Around the corner, the Polo Jeans home collection is all about comfort and familiarity, with an antique whitewashed bed, plaid flannel blankets, American flag pillows and vintage snowshoes hanging on the wall.
To complete the experience, Lauren’s first restaurant, RL Chicago, will open in March for lunch and dinner in an adjacent townhouse. It will have a bar, 100-plus-seat dining room with two fireplaces and an outdoor dining area. The menu will feature Continental cuisine, along with steaks from Lauren’s ranch in Telluride, Colo. RL Chicago will be operated by Nino Esposito, owner of Sette Mezzo and Vico, two of Lauren’s favorite restaurants in Manhattan.
“I’m very excited about the restaurant because it’s a first,” Lauren said. “It’s very exciting to do something you haven’t done before. The restaurant is based on the kind of place I would like to go to. I hope to open more restaurants.”
Lauren also hopes to open more emporiums.
According to Rizzo, the SoHo space at 381 West Broadway will be an evolution of the emporium idea. The company previously had declined to comment on the space, which was purchased by Lauren and Chelsfield PLC, its British partner in May 1997.
“We see it as a wonderful opportunity,” Rizzo said. “It will be a different type of environment than any of the existing flagships. We’re clear on that. The timing for opening is around the new millennium, so it will be modern.
“The product’s the product,” Rizzo said. “We’re looking for a different presentation. The store will have two types of restaurants as well as some new features. We’re talking about things like a print shop, gallery and florist.”
Lauren said the size of the store here should not overshadow existing locations.
“I feel very good about the Rhinelander Mansion. I built a store across the street,” he said, referring to Polo Sport. “The mansion right now is constantly being worked on so it always looks shiny and strong.
“For me, having the ability to present what I do in the best way I can is the ultimate thing you can do,” Lauren said. “So I have that sort of stage in Chicago to present the products and world of where I am. Plus, I’ve built a restaurant. It doesn’t downgrade the other places. You have to always keep stores going and update and rethink where you’re going, and develop new concepts, and we’re doing that.
“This is one type of store we’re doing, but we have other plans to open all sorts of different types of stores,” Lauren said. “I do believe in the retail business. You have to constantly be tuned in and upgrade your stores.”