New York Retail to be Honored at StoreXpo, December 8

The Bloomingdale’s SoHo store and the new Louis Vuitton flagship on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street were named the 2004 New York Stores of the Year, an annual award presented by VM+SD. Both stores will be honored at StoreXpo, the visual merchandising and store design tradeshow held in early December in New York.

The Bloomingdale’s store (covered by the magazine in its July 2004 issue) was honored for its faithfulness to the loft-like SoHo architecture and its daring adoption of color, natural light new materials and soft, flowing lines. It was a joint effort among architects and designers from Bloomingdale’s New York store design and visual merchandising office, headed by senior vp Jack Hruska; the store planning and construction team (SPACE) from parent company Federated Department Stores (Cincinnati), headed by senior vp Rudy Javosky; and the now-defunct design and architecture firm Tucci, Segrete & Rosen, headed by executive vp and creative director Ed Calabrese, who is now with the New York firm Mancini Duffy.

Louis Vuitton (covered by the magazine in its September 2004 issue) took over the building formerly occupied by Warner Bros. Studio Stores. It was honored for its stylishness, its ability to maintain its fashion sensibility in so large a space, and its bold use of color and lighting. Participating in this project were the store planning department from LVMH Fashion Group Americas, headed by vp John Mulliken; the New York design firm Peter Marino & Associates; Japanese architect Jun Aoki; architects from The Phillips Group (New York); and Shawmut Design and Construction (Boston), headed by vp Les Hiscoe.

The crystal apples will be presented to the winners in December in New York during StoreXpo: once at the PAVE gala, the evening of December 7 at the International Toy Building (200 Fifth Ave.); and again during a special StoreXpo reception at 5 p.m. on December 8 in the Javits Center Keynote Theater. The presentations will be made by ST Media Group president Tedd Swormstedt; VM+SD associate publisher Carole Winters; and VM+SD editor Steve Kaufman.

The 2003 winners of this annual award — which goes to the stores that best embody the challenges and difficulties of creating innovative and stylish retailing in New York City — were the Ferragamo flagship store on Fifth Avenue and the Carlos Miele boutique on West 14th Street. In 2002, the winners were the Apple flagship store in SoHo and the Alexander McQueen boutique on West 14th Street.

For more information about StoreXpo and to register to attend, go to StoreXpo, the visual merchandising and store design tradeshow held in early December in New York.