A Store Full of Beenes : Fashion: Geoffrey Beene is among a growing number of American designers opening their own boutiques.
NEW YORK — Designer Geoffrey Beene is telling a tale in his genteel, Louisiana drawl:
“A very serious business lady who works on Seventh Avenue asked me one day, ‘How is your store doing?’ ”
“ ‘It’s great fun,’ ” I said.
She gasped. “That’s the way you speak about your store ?”
As Beene’s amusement over this exchange suggests, he doesn’t see modern retailing the way some people do. The strongest proof is the store itself, a Fifth Avenue boutique he opened just four days before Christmas. He’s the fourth leading American designer, after Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Louis dell’Olio for Anne Klein, to do what is usually left to the big-name Europeans--create a storefront exclusively for his own collection.
But not without raising some eyebrows. At Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, one top specialty store that carries all four labels, there is, shall we say, some concern.
“Sometimes, I’m disappointed,” said John Martens of the trend. As vice president and general manager of Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, he will be host of a luncheon fashion show for Beene on Tuesday, and oversee the store’s two-day trunk show of the designer’s spring collection.
“We’ve done our utmost to treat designers well. We’ve given them shows and window displays, we’ve introduced them to clients at parties, only for them to open their own shop. I wonder why they feel it is necessary.”
He’s not complaining about Beene, in particular. After all, New York is almost 3,000 miles away.
And Beene isn’t complaining about any store in particular, when he explains his view.
“We’ve been very dependent on the stores,” he said, speaking for his New York colleagues. “And I for one have been slightly disappointed. They don’t buy whole collections, all together.” It means customers don’t see a total fashion vision, and designers consider that a disservice.
While Neiman Marcus and other major retailers might not always appreciate the competition, Martens said that free-standing shops actually generate sales for stores, because boutiques give designers greater name recognition. He believes that American-designer stores are springing into existence to compete with the Europeans who have had their own U.S. storefronts for years. “The Americans are playing catch up,” Martens said.
He also conceded, “The retail world is in such turmoil now, with bankruptcies and the like, it’s making designers nervous.” A number of business partners for the designers with free-standing boutiques used the same argument to explain their company’s move toward independence. As one put it: “If the big stores implode, where does that leave me?”
Beene, whose business office reports worldwide retail sales of $250 million last year, seems above it all. Simply stated, “In my own store, I can show my whole collection. And I can be personally involved.” That includes everything from arranging fresh flowers to designing special items available nowhere else.
A Japanese conglomerate, Takashimaya, is backing the shop, and has already opened a free-standing Beene boutique in Taipei, Taiwan, as well as 18 boutiques within Takashimaya stores throughout Japan. Another Japanese company, Takhyo, owns 100% of Anne Klein and 50% of Donna Karan. Yet, many designers deny that the boutique boom is due to the influx of Asian capital.
As with most things, Beene sees it a different way.
“The Japanese came to me with the idea. I never had an American come to me and say they wanted to back my business.”
And while he finds fulfillment in his eccentric little boutique tucked inside the old-world Sherry Netherland hotel, other American designers are mapping their own new course.
“It’s a defensive, not an offensive, move,” said James Tinagero, president of Anne Klein, when asked about his company’s first, free-standing boutique, which opened last fall in Minneapolis, Minn. There is a second one planned for Long Island for next summer, because his company also wants to show customers a complete fashion vision.
There were plans for a third Anne Klein shop, in Beverly Hills, but they were recently cancelled.
“We have to walk before we run,” Tinagero explained. “We’re not retail specialists. We’re learning that side of the business.”
He and others credit Ralph Lauren with teaching them how it can be done. Lauren opened his first, free-standing shop on Madison Avenue in 1986 and now has about 65, including one in Beverly Hills.
This month Calvin Klein opened his third shop, in Palm Beach, Florida, with others in Boston and Dallas. And Donna Karan now says that free-standing boutiques are part of her company’s near future.
Like the Kleins, Karan expects to try out the boutique concept outside Manhattan.
Her business partner and husband, Stephan Weiss said, “We’ll iron out the wrinkles before we come into the big top.”
“It’s a gamble, but that’s what creativity is all about,” Beene said.
In his elegant, eccentric store, even the decor is a gamble of sorts, or at least, a very personal expression. His favorite Dalmatian print decorates handbags and gloves as well as the upholstery. He shows his wit by way of a footstool with four Cuban heels for the legs. Extravagant indulgences include a petit-point chair cushion it took one meticulous embroiderer a full year to complete.
A mannequin that stands atop a granite column wears a red leather fencing jacket. In the Fifth Avenue window is a cocktail dress of lace and dotted chiffon. In the alcove for daytime wear is a navy blue pin-striped suit with a sheer white blouse.
“It’s a laboratory for learning, both what the customers like and what they want,” he said. Coming experiments include a new men’s-wear collection he will introduce in March, and a lower priced women’s collection due next fall. The $500 dresses and $1,000 suits will be priced at about one-third of his existing women’s-wear line. Called “Mr Beene,” the “affordable couture” clothes will be available in stores nationwide.
(Vincent Boucher, a free - lance fashion writer, contributed to this story from New York.)
