Anne D'Innocenzio NEW YORK --..
LIZA BRUCE OPENS SOHO STORE
Byline: Anne D’Innocenzio
NEW YORK — London’s Liza Bruce has set up shop in Manhattan’s SoHo, but don’t expect a major commercial presence — it looks like someone’s closet, and that is exactly her point.
“This is my jewel box,” she said, standing in her tiny 350-square-foot boutique at 80 Thompson Street, which is off of the main drag, Spring Street. “It has a closet-like effect. I’m into how clothes interact with the interior.”
The boutique, which carries her swimwear and sportswear, quietly opened on Jan. 31, marking her third retail venture. It is also her smallest. Bruce’s first boutique, at 500 square feet, opened about 18 months ago at Pont Street in London, and last February, she unveiled a 1,500-square-foot store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
Creating small intimate retail stores, which don’t smack of commercialism, is all part of Bruce’s new approach to business since the designer closed her wholesale firm in 1996.
Bruce’s wholesale business, which peaked in the late Eighties when it boasted annual sales of more than $5 million, went into voluntary liquidation in February 1996, after a prolonged copyright dispute with Marks & Spencer drained her financial resources. She was also hit hard by the Chapter 11 filing of Barneys New York, then her largest account. “I had to rethink how I was going to approach doing business,” she said, adding that she doesn’t plan to focus on wholesaling again. She cited pressures to do something new each season and to plan so far ahead.
Bruce projects that each of the stores should do about $1 million a year. The interiors, which feature colorblocking, were designed by her husband, Nicholas Alvis-Vega, an interior designer, but Bruce is taking a different approach with each boutique.
Bruce’s boutique on Melrose Avenue, for example, has a beachier feel, and offers more embellished items. “It’s more kitsch,” she noted.
Merchandise in both the London and the New York boutiques is similar, she said. Bruce’s SoHo store offers plenty of layered looks and focuses on black. It features a bronze chair, designed by her husband, and a Yoruban beaded chair from Africa.
Bruce said the compact store reflects what consumers want in their clothes: packable items that can easily be taken out of the suitcase.
Styles in SoHo store include tankinis and bandeaus in Lycra and polyamide, as well as mesh turtlenecks, vintage beaded capes, nylon shirts, and skirts featuring patches from antique Indian saris.
