jump!

by olima

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.”

http://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68501/index2.html

REASONS TO LOVE NEW YORK # 8. Because This Is a Town Where Gabourey Sidibe Can Be an “It” Girl

As far as starlets go—a young woman in possession of that rare ability to walk into a room, command head-turns, and make her own fun wherever she goes—Gabourey Sidibe is not a usual suspect.

What she is armed with is an unshakable confidence. “People say I got this role and now I’m awesome, but the truth is I’ve always been awesome.”

“She charms people,” says Andrew Saffir, who invites her to his mover-and-shaker-stocked movie screenings for the Cinema Society. “When actors see her, they literally run for her. ”

“She defies all prejudices of mass-market stardom,” says Village Voice columnist Michael Musto. “No one ever looks or talks to her and says, ‘Who’s that again?’ ”

REASON TO LOVE NEW YORK # 11-13. Because There Are Now Three Women on the Supreme Court, All of Them From New York

one, perhaps, was inevitable (it’s a big city); two you could still call a fluke. But for all three female Supreme Court justices to have been born and bred in New York—that, frankly, starts to look like more than an accident.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan may have grown up under different circumstances and in different boroughs, but all of them are recognizably, and in some cases iconically, New York gals.

Say what you want about New York women: They’re not timid. Not in speech, not in opinions. And not in their fashion choices, either. As Goldberg notes, who else but three New York women would find the classiest, most formidable way to spend the rest of their lives in black?

eileen fisher lab store
new store idea

collection
+ samples (many not available elsewhere)
+ best picks from the current and previous year’s line
+ gently loved recycled items- proceeds benefit charitable initiatives designed to help empower girls and women.


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