Hedi Slimane’s latest brick in the rebuilt house of Saint Laurent is now in place: As of this afternoon, the label’s first downtown store is open on Soho’s Greene Street. Saint Laurent (né Yves) has long had a presence on East 57th Street, which it maintains, but under Slimane, the direction has gone decidedly, as the marketers say, “downtown.” As one on-message Saint Laurent exec said, shrugging, at a preview this morning: “Some of my friends don’t ever make it as far as 57th Street.”
Soho feels right for the new Saint Laurent, and the 4,000-square-foot space has the look and feel of an open-plan photo studio—all light and space and monitors displaying Slimane’s campaigns—with many original details intact, from the tin ceiling to the structural columns. (The store sits in the Soho-Cast Iron Historic District, and if you believe in retail mojo, was Helmut Lang’s New York outpost in the good old days.) Bags and shoes line the marble shelves on the walls: mostly new standards like the Duffle, the Sac de Jour, and the Betty, but with a few best-selling leftovers from earlier days, too, such as the Cabas Chyc bag and the Tribute and Trib Too heels. Slimane himself picked the high-minded vintage furniture that decks out the space (by Jean Prouvé, Marcel Breuer, et al.), customized the playlist (Richard Hell and Nirvana as of this morning), and designed all the fixtures. I can personally vouch that his new collections hang on them, despite their absence above. They include not only the Spring line but select previews of pre-fall available for pre-order, which tend toward the unstintingly luxurious. For men, there are the sequined jackets worn by Daft Punk in Slimane’s photos; for women, the embellished baby-doll dress worn by Cara Delevingne in the new ad campaign. It will run you a cool $68,000. But as spaces to consider such a life-altering purchase go, the new store is very good.
Saint Laurent Paris is now open at 80 Greene Street, NYC, ysl.com.
—Matthew Schneier
Photos: Courtesy of Saint Laurent
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