California Apparel News

Downtown Los Angeles’ fashion footprint keeps growing. Eric Martin, co-owner of fashion showroom The Park, announced a new retail project for downtown Los Angeles in a recent flurry of high-profile store debuts in the area.

Downtown Los Angeles’ fashion district is set to become a hot retail spot since high-marquee fashion companies such as Zara, Urban Outfitters Inc. and Acne Studios, maker of Acne jeans, confirmed they will build emporiums around the neighborhood and in downtown Los Angeles.

Martin plans to open a boutique on Los Angeles Street on the ground floor of the Lady Liberty Building, where The Park showroom has been located since 2007.

Scheduled to open in September, the 8,000-square-foot retail space will house a multi-brand boutique to be called Seven Points. The boutique will sell the contemporary and premium fashion brands carried in The Park showroom, including Jachs, Zanerobe, Goorin Bros., M. Cohen and Athletic Recon. The front half of the cavernous space will be devoted to the store, which will also feature a coffee bar and, eventually, a lounge serving alcohol.

The back half of the boutique will house a showroom for The Park and an events area for parties and performances. The showroom section of the compound opens June 1, and The Park and its 16-person team is relocating from suite 400 of the Lady Liberty Building. The Park runs a New York office, as well. Martin worked with Brad Collin, a partner in The Park showroom’s New York office, on the compound’s rollout. Martin also said he is partnering with The Park employee Adam Redhead to open Seven Points boutique.

Martin also will take over 3,000 square feet in the Lady Liberty’s basement, which will house a stylist lounge and the offices of The Media Playground PR Agency. It is Park’s collaboration with veteran public-relations company Pure Consulting, and it will offer marketing, publicity and stylist services.

To finance the project, Martin sold his house in Los Angeles’ Mount Washington neighborhood, as well as some vehicles. He planned it before he was aware that Urban Outfitters and Acne were also moving to downtown LA. He said he thought it was a good bet because there was a lot of foot traffic in the fashion district and not much contemporary retail to service it. The retail project also was a safe bet because no one sells his clients’ fashions in the neighborhood.

“For sample sales alone, business will increase 500 percent,” Martin forecast.

The store will feature murals, market lighting, cantilevered library-style ladders to scale the space’s high walls and garage-style doors that will open into the busy street. Planks USA Inc., a design and custom-furniture company headquartered in Lake Forest, Calif., is working with Martin to renovate the space.

On June 1, boutique owner Darren Gold is opening a pop-up shop for his Alpha Man boutique at Seven Points. The pop-up shop will remain open until August. Gold has been producing pop-up shops around Southern California—including a long-term pop-up shop in Palm Springs, Calif.—since he shuttered his permanent location in West Hollywood, Calif. The retailer said he has been scouting locations in downtown Los Angeles. “I have a good feeling about it,” he said.

(The Park’s Martin is of no relation to Eric Martin, co-designer of the Martin Martin fashion label, also headquartered in downtown LA.)