Upscale Retail Fights to Remain Relevant with Dirty Old Luxury

A few months back, I ran across a blog post from Kit­sune Noir with pic­tures of a one-​of-​a-​kind Ralph Lauren shop in his neigh­bor­hood. The store is a con­verted auto shop filled with high style motor­cy­cle cul­ture aes­thetic that would fool Brando. He snapped some covert pics before being asked to leave. The photos show the lengths the RRL folks have gone to “keep it real”.

The blog also ref­er­enced a sim­i­lar pro­gram from J Crew con­vert­ing a liquor store into a fly-​by-​night vin­tage bou­tique that just hap­pens to be filled with grimy ver­sions of the J Crew brand. The pic­tures show its a mil­lion miles from the crisp clean shop in my local mall.

My first reac­tion is out­rage. How dare they invade my dirty vin­tage sub­cul­ture with this lie of a store? I did a fea­ture post a while back about the fail­ure of Ben­negans and Steak & Ale. I hypoth­e­sized that the idea of a man­u­fac­tured expe­ri­ence was fading away as the next gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers grows up and begins spend­ing. But from the per­spec­tive of Ralph Lauren and J Crew, I’m start­ing to see their point.

I assume they are trying some­thing new because they are notic­ing a decline in sales from the demo­graphic the “fake vintage” shops are tar­get­ing. If they simply stayed true to who they their decline will con­tinue. They are simply trying to sur­vive. And hon­estly, it looks like a nice store. I’m also impressed that they took an older run down loca­tion that was in decline and turned it into some­thing useful. This form of recy­cling seems just as affec­tive as a real vin­tage store.

Don’t get, me wrong, I still wouldn’t shop there, but I see where they are coming from and respect their solu­tion to a chal­leng­ing prob­lem. Some pic­tures of the RRL & Co and J Crew bou­tiques below:

Spe­cial thanks to Bobby Solomon for the tip and the photos. He has a great blog full of cool stuff like this.