Santa Domingo in 2010: “Chic social X-rays swirl about the salons, flutes of champagne or crystal goblets of sparkling water in hand, eyeing 24-carat-gold-plated iPads and coloured gemstone bracelets.” While Moda Operandi is best known today as an e-commerce site, its roots were, and remain, in one-on-one appointments. A similar system has been in place at Blue Mountain School in London’s Shoreditch for some years. Before Redchurch Street became a luxury shopping hub, with A.P.C. and Aesop paving the way to lunch at Cecconi’s, Hostem was the lone retail maverick, opening in 2010 with an interior by pioneering designers JamesPlumb, and clothing on the racks by a then hard-to-source Rick Owens. As co-founder Christie Brown explains, every Saturday the shop was a tourist attraction: “We were really busy in terms of footfall, and the client experience suffered as a result of the browsing crowd. Meaningful interaction was almost impossible. Now with what we call Hostem Archive incorporated into Blue Mountain School, we have an appointment system and can introduce clients to something they haven’t seen before, sharing what drew us to work with the creators in the first place.” The disconnect between designer and retail point is being bridged by private experiences. Before Barneys vanished from the retail landscape of New York, the store was the most popular way to engage with milliner Albertus Swanepoel’s work. His hats were among its best sellers. Now he focuses on collaborations with Coach and other runway brands and invites celebrities and private clients to his atelier in the NoMad neighbourhood of Manhattan. The studio is a fantasia of ribbons and felt – this is where you’ll be fitted, and where the work actually takes shape. “The space used to be an artist’s loft, so it’s really charming, with its high From left: a peek inside the closet at Blue Mountain School in Shoreditch, London; New York-based milliner Albertus Swanepoel PHOTOS FROM LEFT: LEWIS RONALD, FALYN HUANG 68
I love talking to clients about their lives, and as hats are so personal, it’s really important to see the client’s facial structure and overall look. When you make hats for wholesale and stores, that is all lost — Albertus Swanepoel ceilings and huge windows,” says Swanepoel. “I love talking to clients about their lives, and as hats are so personal, it’s really important to see the client’s facial structure and overall look. When you make hats for wholesale and stores, that is all lost.” Conversation can be creative. You can find the romantic, sculptural silhouettes of Copenhagenbased womenswear designer Cecilia Bahnsen for sale online, but she believes her private appointment system offers something that elevates engagement with what she makes. “It offers a true insight into our universe,” she says. “Often women are familiar with our dresses from a digital space, but with me, they can experience the touch of the pieces, how they move and can be styled, and allow them to explore a full look with shoes and bags.” There’s a big difference between what these designers are doing and, say, the tailors of Savile Row. On The Row, almost any client’s whim can be indulged, but fashion is not tailoring. “I will offer any leather and colour the customer wants, but I won’t change the fundamental design of our bags,” explains Ramesh Nair, who before Duclos was creative director at Moynat, and before that on the team at Hermès. No one in Paris knows luxury leather better than him, nor the importance of retaining the integrity of a maison. There are, as with the ultra-bespoke design services offered by the likes of Rolls-Royce and Hermès, core values that can’t be diluted. Which is, of course, why brands are so precious. If you want that Hermès Birkin, you can’t just go and get it, you have to apply for an appointment via an app, and most applicants will end up disappointed. You can buy scarves, blankets and sneakers whenever you like, but the bags are highly guarded because of that heated resale market. Similarly, Chanel’s CFO Philippe Blondiaux told The Business of Fashion in May 2022 that the brand will be investing heavily in “very protected boutiques to service clients in a very exclusive way” to “protect our customers and in particular, our pre-existing customers.” Chanel has less than half the global retail space that Louis Vuitton does, which explains why there are often roped-off queues at their stores to manage demand. The Business of Fashion reported plans to start opening these “protected boutiques” in Asia in early 2023, but when approached for comment, the German press office of Chanel stated that Blondiaux was talking simply about the “salons privés” that have always existed within their boutiques, and not separate invite-only boutiques. W hile a house like Chanel, which reported a 49.6 per cent year-on-year surge in revenues in 2021 to .6 billion, can afford to decide who is allowed to buy its products or not, small businesses work to a different business model. When the menswear designers behind the label Duckie Brown were looking at a new retail space in Manhattan recently, they decided to pivot. “We were about to sign a lease for a tiny space that was going to cost around ,000 a month,” says co-founder Daniel Silver. “I suddenly thought – what are we doing!? It wasn’t going to be the way we wanted to present our clothes.” Silver and his partner Steven Cox 69
