H&M Opening High-Tech Flagship in N.Y.

H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (Stockholm) will open what it expects to be its most productive North American store this week, in New York’s Times Square.

Lady Gaga will appear at the opening on Thursday. H&M will be selling the singer’s new album at 175 of its stores.

At 42,000 square feet, the store is probably the retailer’s largest in the world (at least until a 56,000-square-foot H&M flagship opens next spring at Fifth Avenue and 48th Street and a 63,000-square-foot store on Herald Square next fall). It is also likely to be the most expensive. Women’s Wear Daily reported that Times Square retail space rents for about $2500 per square foot.

And it will likely be H&M’s most high-tech store. WWD reports two 30-by-20-foot LED screens will hang on the Broadway and 42rd Street sides of the building, alongside a vertical H&M sign. A curved 40-by-109-foot LED screen is located above the H&M logo at the main entrance.

The ground-floor windows facing the street are interactive. Light boxes with messages are found throughout the store. In addition, four 70-foot-high logos on the building’s 45th floor will be lit in a New Year’s Eve-style countdown to the store opening.

“We’re going to dominate the Manhattan skyline,” said Daniel Kulle, president of H&M North America.

Indoors, says WWD, there are two LED portals above the entrance that display different graphic experiences, a display of revolving mannequins, vertical LED screens behind the fashion display and a gigantic 20-by-30-foot LED screen over the cash wrap. All in all, there are more than 7000 square feet of LED screens.

Hanging from the third-floor ceiling, 53 feet above the ground floor, are trusses that can be raised and lowered, with mannequins hanging from them.

“We have cages for them and we can hang them in different ways so they look like they’re flying,” Kulle told WWD.