The retail apocalypse, it turns out, has a dress code, and it is a floor-length puffer. On Fifth Avenue this fall, the stores are not closing. They are getting bigger, more theatrical and, in at least one case, equipped with a private suite modeled on a Paris apartment, in case the shopping becomes too much.
Exhibit A sits at 767 Fifth Avenue, the former home of FAO Schwarz and, more recently, a temporary Apple store. On Sept. 10, Moncler opened its largest flagship in the world there: 23,680 square feet on two levels, according to WWD, with a 26-foot atrium, black granite-textured glass columns meant to evoke the skyline, and an Ugo Rondinone sculpture of three huge stacked stones by way of alpine reference.
A puffer palace where the piano used to be
For Moncler Group executive chairman Remo Ruffini, the store is personal. “I’ve always had a strong connection with New York, my father lived in the city for years starting from 1968 and I used to visit often, as a child marveling at the size of everything, compared to Italy,” he told WWD. He’d wanted a New York store for years, and this was the address. “The location is perfect, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, and to me it’s always been a point of reference over the years.”
It took three years to restructure the space, with interiors by Gilles & Boissier, the husband-and-wife studio that has designed some 250 Moncler stores. The ground floor holds the main collections and the Moncler Genius line; down a few steps is women’s outerwear. Upstairs is Moncler Grenoble, the performance-mountain collection, plus a bar, an event space and the aforementioned private suite for clients with personal shoppers. Some pieces are there purely to be looked at, including the 1 Moncler Pierpaolo Piccioli puffer coat Sarah Jessica Parker wore in “And Just Like That.” There is a made-to-measure service, with customized orders taking six to eight months, and a line of store-exclusive patches from Jony Ive’s LoveFrom, featuring a big apple and the Moncler bear scaling the Empire State Building.
Ruffini was candid about the ambition. Moncler, he told WWD, is “a bit under-penetrated compared to our competitors” in the U.S., where the Americas account for 13.5 percent of brand revenue. And he was candid about the weather, too: New York’s cold winters, he said, smiling, will help sell.
Saint Laurent takes a corner
A few blocks south, the luxury business is also playing landlord. Saint Laurent has leased about 9,600 square feet at 717 Fifth Avenue for a new store, according to a deal record from Traded dated Oct. 9; Commercial Observer also reported the lease. The landlord is a joint venture of Kering, Saint Laurent’s parent, and the investment firm Ardian. Traded’s record indicates the brand is moving from a larger space at 3 East 57th Street. No rent or term was disclosed.
There is something very Fifth Avenue about a fashion conglomerate signing a lease with itself, more or less. The logic rhymes with Moncler’s: on the avenue’s most valuable stretch, a big, permanent flagship has become the statement of choice in a business that worries constantly about being fashionable.
Madison gets younger
Uptown, the shift is generational. The Strategist’s fall store roundup chronicled a “Madison Avenue shake-up”: Marfa Stance, maker of “the statusy reversible puffers worn by the Butterfield Market set,” at 801 Madison; J.J. Martin’s La DoubleJ opening its first U.S. store on East 69th Street next to Birley Bakery; and a flock of downtown-turned-uptown labels, Sézane, Cult Gaia, Guest in Residence and TWP, joining what The Strategist called “Madison’s flock of younger fare.” Dunhill is joining Paul Smith a few blocks from Thom Sweeney to form what the magazine called a “semi–Savile Row.” Initio, a Parisian fragrance house, opened its first U.S. shop at 784 Madison, complete with a “Feel Lab” where shoppers wear a headband that measures their brain activity while they sniff.
And the old guard is moving too. J. Press, founded at Yale in 1902, is moving from the Yale Club Building to 340 Madison, The Strategist reports.
Hermès crosses the river
The most telling move of the season may not be in Manhattan at all. Hermès is opening a 9,400-square-foot store at 130 Berry Street in Williamsburg, with two floors designed in the spirit of a craft workshop, entered through a courtyard, and windows by Brooklyn artist Christina Zimpel, per The Strategist. It is hard to imagine a clearer signal of where the money now lives than a French saddlery opening a two-story boutique a short walk from the Bedford Avenue L stop.
Why the avenues still matter
For a decade, the received wisdom was that e-commerce would hollow out the city’s great shopping streets. Instead, the brands are doubling down on the physical, building stores that are less about transactions than about atmosphere, art and private rooms. WWD’s description of the Moncler flagship as “massive, distinct, experiential, yet not really transactional” might serve as the motto for the whole season.
For New Yorkers, the result is a strange civic gift: a few more places on Fifth where you can walk in, look at a Rondinone, admire a puffer Carrie Bradshaw wore on television, and walk back out without spending a cent. The stores, of course, are hoping you won’t.
The City Politic has reached out to Moncler, Saint Laurent, Kering and Hermès for comment and will update this story with any response.
Photo: The former FAO Schwarz space at 767 Fifth Avenue, as Apple’s temporary store; it is now Moncler’s flagship. Fletcher / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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