Story of Opening Ceremony

‘What do we love? We love traveling, we love shopping, we love eating, we love magazines, we love music.

So what can we do to incorporate all these loves into, you know, a business?’ ”

They decided to open a store. They would name it Opening Ceremony after the Olympics (another of their loves), and they’d focus on a different country each year, pitting its young and established designers against young American designers. The gimmick of friendly competition—tallied by sales—was meant to spur designers to create their best work. Mostly, though, it was an excuse for Humberto and Carol to use their passports.

found a pro bono business adviser at Pace University to help with their prospectus.

Humberto and Carol had saved up $10,000 each, and they managed to get a matching loan. “We thought it was so much money,” says Humberto, laughing. They rented a former linen store at 35 Howard Street, on a quiet block mostly devoid of retail.

Conscripting friends for manual labor.

For the first six years, they kept the cash registers in the back room, just so monetary transactions wouldn’t be on the customers’ minds.

That store, along with the online business, was what turned them into a global phenomenon, but they insist it was really just born from a feeling of deep disappointment when they went to Japan on a buying trip. “You imagine you’ll find all these stores that are so mind-blowing, and we didn’t,” says Humberto. “We decided to open up our own version of what a Japanese store should be.”

“I think they’re filling a niche,” says Sevigny. “Where’s the department store for young people?” As in all Opening Ceremony outposts, the range of offerings is high, low, chic, strange—things you’d never wear and things you suddenly can’t live without.

“You can see that we are personally interested in every single thing that we represent in the store. I think if you can ask the question ‘What makes this so great?’ to every single thing that you buy, then chances are you have the right answer.”

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