Opening Ceremony - NY Times articles

[dunkin deeznuts]

Good article, congrats to Carol and Humberto....2 very cool peeps

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/fashion/13CEREMONY.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

THREE tidbits of recent fashion news that may have escaped your attention:

]Robert Wright for The New York Times

Staff member Morgan Rehbock in Opening Ceremony suit.

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the modernistic and exorbitantly priced label designed by, is moving downtown to an unglamorous block of Howard Street, off lower Broadway.

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Topshop, the British chain that rivals H & M in reprocessing runway fashion for the masses, plans to open its first New York store in September, near the new Jil Sander.

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Over in Sweden, H & M acquired a majority stake in the maker of Cheap Monday jeans last week, for roughly $91 million.

What has one to do with another, you may be wondering.

In fashion, there is often a common denominator, even in seemingly random events, that persuades a designer to take up residence far from the beaten luxury path; a foreign retailer to try to conquer New York; and a multibillion-dollar company to invest in a hot niche brand. In this case, the catalyst happens to be a store: Opening Ceremony, at 35 Howard Street, opened in 2002 by two former luxury retail executives, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim.

The store looks like an old mom-and-pop, inside and out, and retains the vivid imprint of its former life as a distribution center for Pond’s skin-care products. The displays are messy, and the dressing room curtains don’t quite close all the way. But as a destination for fashion insiders and the people who wish to dress like them, this may be the most influential place in retail at the moment.

Opening Ceremony is primarily known for carrying avant-garde pieces from fairly obscure designers and for its house label designed by Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim. But it also embraces experimentation, selling a Target collection by Proenza Schouler one weekend last year; a line by the actress Chloë Sevigny last month; and, since 2005, the fast-fashion Topshop label.

And last year it decided to carry the absurdly skinny Cheap Monday jeans from Sweden, which cost $60 and created such a run that 6,000 pairs were sold in one month. People seemed to appreciate a pair of designer jeans that didn’t cost $300, even if they could more accurately be called denim pantyhose.

“There’s a sense of them running a small store and thinking big and creatively at the same time,†said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York, which carries some of the Opening Ceremony collection at its stores, including a $365 boxy linen dress and a $500 blazer by Ms. Sevigny. Rather than treating other stores as competitors, Opening Ceremony sells its lines to stores like Colette in Paris and 10 Corso Como in Milan. Oak, a fashion boutique that started in Brooklyn, opened a Manhattan location on Bond Street a month ago with the Opening Ceremony designs in the front of the store.

“There is such a uniqueness and also a noncompetitiveness to what they do that it comes across as being what it is, which is really natural,†Ms. Gilhart said. “It’s a fun store to shop in. It’s an expression of them.â€

With clothing racks scattered around a factorylike box with purple walls, a loft in the back for Topshop and a basement accessed by rickety wooden steps, the store is unconventional because it operates on two seemingly incongruous rails. After a decade in which many shoppers became bored with homogenous-looking luxury brands, Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim wanted to create a different kind of store, one that captured the excitement of shopping in a particular moment, as did bygone stores like Paraphernalia in the ’60s, Charivari in the ’70s or Fiorucci into the ’80s.

MR. LEON, 32, and Ms. Lim, 33, met as undergraduates at Berkeley and remained friends as they pursued careers in fashion in New York. Mr. Leon was a visual director at Burberry, and Ms. Lim a merchandise planner for Bally, during years when those houses were reinventing their images for a modern luxury age. On a vacation in Hong Kong, while shopping in independent designer stalls, they began to conceive Opening Ceremony.

Mr. Leon borrowed the name and concept from the Olympic Games. Introduce the most interesting designers of one country in the store every September: Hong Kong the first year, followed by Germany, Brazil, Britain and Sweden. The formula is not precise. A second location that opened in Los Angeles last year is expanding to look more like a Hong Kong minimall, with stalls for Jane Mayle, Nom de Guerre, Acne Jeans and Topshop.

“It’s a new way of looking at a department store,†Ms. Lim said. “We’re not a small specialty store.â€

Last Sunday, when the doors were unlocked at noon, the usual pre-brunch crowd began to arrive to see what was new. There’s always something new. Margherita Missoni, the knitwear heiress, walked in, and Mr. Leon reminded her, “I’m the one who saved you from that dress disaster last time.†You can usually spot some random famous person shopping there, like Linda Evangelista or Leonard Nimoy.

Along one wall, two racks contained the remnants of the original 4,000 pieces made for Ms. Sevigny’s collection, which was almost sold out.

The day before, Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim had unpacked a special collection made by the California surf line Maui & Sons, a recreation of its first 100 designs, including fluorescent pink and yellow board shorts and T-shirts with its shark logo rendered in puffy paint. They remember the moment in the mid-1980s, when they were teenagers in Los Angeles and Maui was cool.

Skip to next paragraph Robert Wright for The New York Times

MODELS OF EXPERIMENTATION Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, the creators of Open Ceremony, wanted a store that embraced change.

] [/color]Robert Wright for The New York Times

They also brought back nostalgic brands like Tretorn shoes and Stetson hats, with new designs made specifically for the store; and in their way, they made Opening Ceremony a reflection of the experience of a generation that grew up as fashion’s currency shifted from shopping mall labels to a mass exposure of luxury brands.

“The style went from ‘Pretty in Pink’ to Prada,†Mr. Leon said. Next to the Maui T-shirts, there are racks of clothes with prices some would find obscene, like a $425 waistcoat from Band of Outsiders, a $795 dress from Alexandre Herchcovitch, a trim men’s suit by Patrik Ervell for $1,200.

Their willingness to combine elements from both ends of the spectrum struck a nerve. When asked why he sells his clothes at the store, Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler said that Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim were among “the few kids of our specific generation to open their own stores.â€

“It’s inevitable,†he added, “that our tastes are very much in line with one another.â€

When the store first opened, Howard Street was practically barren. Ms. Lim recalls seeing people driving up after 8 p.m., when the store closed, and dumping trash on the street. Now Jil Sander is moving in, and a luxury hotel is opening down the block. There are rumors of other designers looking at spaces nearby. Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim are thrilled.

“Since we’ve opened, our point of view is that if someone else is doing what we’re doing, we should move on,†he said. “We have a built-in concept that constantly challenges itself to refresh.â€

[culturalmulatto]

This was the first thing I did when I woke up this morning. All in all, good article but I wasn't as enamored with the information about O.C. as much as the tiny bits of info regarding a rebirth of Howard St.

*Also, its hard not to get slightly pissed when you see mainstream media pick up on brands that you would better keep to yourself (...i know a ton of people shop at OC but compared to Banana Republic...). Its the same feeling I got when I first saw NDG highlighted in GQ mag. Though I would be stoked if I was in their position.

[btbam]

This is also the first thing i did after waking up. Props to them.

[sidneylo]

Fuck Robert Wright and those shitty studio portraits.