LOS ANGELES — Visitors walking into Milanese men’s sportswear company Stone Island’s first Stateside shop on La Brea Avenue are greeted with a gallery presentation of jackets.
President and creative director Carlo Rivetti, in town for the store’s opening, calls the front half of the more than 3,000-square-foot space the “emotional area.” It’s there that rows of Stone Island’s futuristic jackets — the past, present and future — are on display through March 13.
“The idea is that in the emotional area we can tell stories of our past because we are not known in the U.S. and so we have the opportunity to show what we have done in the past and we have a lot of [stories],” Rivetti said. “Thirty-three years of innovation, research and technology is important.”
Once the brand story is understood, visitors can walk past the exhibition into the actual store where its spring collection — including a garment-dyed, reflective jacket retailing for $1,033 — is available for purchase.
It’s smart retailing for the brand as it looks to make a name for itself in the U.S. Stone Island already counts 19 stores in Europe and two in Seoul. The La Brea store in Los Angeles will be followed up with a second U.S. store in New York at the site of a pop-up shop it recently held there.
“It’s a different approach compared to fashion,” Rivetti said. “We are more technological. We are not high-performance. We are not fashion. We are technology. I feel very close to industrial design.”
After New York, the company will see how the two stores on opposite ends of the country fare and complement the online business.
“We need to mix the real experience with the experience on the Web and I want to give the opportunity to customers [so] they can choose to come here, buy physically [or] buy through the computer and they can receive the merchandise here or, if they want, at home,” he said. “I want to give the customer all the opportunity to buy in the way they like because I think much more than Europe, the American customer, they know how to use the Internet.”
Stone Island tapped Los Angeles for its first U.S. outpost because of the melting pot of creatives residing, working and visiting the city, according to Rivetti. The location on La Brea came about partially by chance, he said.
Company executives had been shopping for real estate in and around the area and happened to stop in at Sycamore Kitchen, also on La Brea. Rivetti said he appreciated the street scene and it just so happened the store’s location became available: “So here we are — because of the coffee.”