COS on Friday opened its first women’s-only boutique in the U.S. in Greenwich, Conn., while sister brand & Other Stories zeroed in on a location for its first California store.
Los Angeles has been a source of fascination for & Other Stories since its 2013 launch. Rodarte and Clare Vivier co-lab collections, and perspectives from stylists such as Jayne Min and B. Akerlund, as well as the Gummer sisters, have infused & Other Stories with narratives from the City of Angels.
& Other Stories will return the favor with a 5,700-square-foot flagship at 370 North Beverly Drive opening in the fall.
The store will feature a wide range of products including ready-to-wear, handbags, shoes, beauty, accessories and jewelry.
“Reaching Los Angeles is something all of us at Stories have been looking forward to for quite some time,” said Samuel Fernström, managing director of & Other Stories. “It truly is the city of dreams, so we’re thrilled to have found this great location right in the heart of [the city]. California has a special place in our hearts.”
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In the fall, & Other Stories will open a second California store at South Coast Plaza. The brands’ ateliers in Paris and Stockholm design & Other Stories collections with an emphasis on attention to detail and quality at affordable prices.
COS and & Other Stories are two of H&M’s independent brands and maintain a high degree of autonomy from the parent company.
& Other Stories operates stores in Aarhus, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Berlin, Bologna, Brussels, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Cologne, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Ghent, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Malaga, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, Rome and Stockholm. The retailers’ two U.S. stores are in SoHo and on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Its online store, stories.com, sells to 12 European countries and the U.S.
The 2,260-square-foot COS women’s-only store at 283 Greenwich Avenue, is the brand’s ninth U.S. unit. It features every day essentials — T-shirts, dresses, jeans and blazers — and deconstructed classics designed using intricate techniques such as draping and origami folds, which are precise, yet appear effortless.
The Greenwich store is similar in size to a COS women’s-only store on King’s Road in London. “The store is 2,690 square feet,” said Marie Honda, managing director of COS. “It’s a statement.”
Honda has said she sees potential to grow COS further in cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
COS, which launched on London’s Regent Street in March 2007, is created by an in-house team of designers and buyers. COS has 165 stores in 30 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia and the Middle East. Its online store sells to 19 markets worldwide.