With Help From Friends: Urban Outfitters Opens Space15Twenty
Here’s another way to reinvent the mall. Open a store and surround it with all of the boutiques you like. Urban Outfitters Inc. followed this business logic on Dec. 6, when it held a gala debut for a 11,000-square-foot Urban Outfitters store in Los Angeles’ Hollywood section.
Of course, the party also celebrated the debut of store’s retail complex, called Space15Twenty, named after the mall’s address, 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood. The space includes a restaurant and a courtyard for performances. It is the first of what may be a handful of other Urban Outfitters-dominated malls to be built by the Philadelphia–based retailer, which also owns the contemporary retail chain Anthropologie.
More than five boutiques surround the complex’s Urban Outfitters. These neighbors are intended to attract every demographic of customer desired by Urban Outfitters, according to a store spokesperson. One neighbor is skateboard fashion store Alife, which was meant to attract the skate-fashion crowd. There’s high-fashion vintage store What Comes Around Goes Around and art and architectural bookstore Hennessey Ingalls. Both are intended to attract a luxury customer. And for the fashion crowd, there’s a pop-up shop for the 4-year-old New York label Samantha Pleet.
The Samantha Pleet Pop-Up Shop is home to a couple of Greek classical statues, as well as the designer’s self-named label and Patrick Pleet, a line that she designs with husband Patrick McGovern. The Samantha Pleet line includes plenty of rompers, mini-dresses and tailored jackets, while Patrick Pleet specializes in men’s tailored suits made with organic materials. The pop-up shop’s starring line, however, is Rapscallion. It’s Pleet’s collaboration line with Urban Outfitters. The six-piece capsule collection includes jeans, which retail for $78.
Pleet grew up in Philadelphia, the hometown of Urban Outfitters. The pop-up shop represents more than a trip back home. She said it explored her mind. “It’s our subconscious,” she said of the space. “It’s classic and futuristic,” she said.
DESIGNER AT REST: Samantha Pleet sits in her self named pop-up shop with her husband Patrick McGovern
