Uptown, Downtown, All Around the Town

I wonder if New York City retail alone could support its own magazine. With each visit, I am faced with … well, a new face.

New York's retail venues, like the city itself, are in perpetual motion — constantly growing, changing (and for the most part) improving. We in the media trot along breathlessly, trying to keep up with the renovations, new store openings and changing visuals.

Why? We know that today's New York store designs will show up tomorrow in Cincinnati, Seattle and Atlanta. “The City” is retail's great laboratory, an incubator for trends and new directions in the retail arts.

As the new Millennium approaches, New York City's usual frenetic pace has picked up even more. Hot retailers like Old Navy, Brooks Brothers, Sephora, Donna Karan and others have hurried to open new stores in time for the big ball to drop. There's no place like New York City to experience millennial madness.

For all its wonder, New York can be cruel and demanding. Real estate is a constant topic of conversation and for good reason — it affects everything. Rents on Manhattan's choicest streets have closed good stores. I was especially disappointed when a newer retailer, Shanghai Tang, packed up under the pressure. However, Stueben takes Shanghai's place with a splendid new store, deeper pockets and a narrower and maybe more profitable product line. This scenario continues to repeat itself: retail uptown is becoming a gallery of glorious, loss-leader stores designed to establish brand equity in the eyes of New Yorkers as well as tourists from the U.S. and around the world.

While uptown addresses on 57th Street, Madison and Fifth avenues have always sheltered retail's elite, interesting evolutions are occurring downtown. Cheaper overhead and non-traditional clientele foster experimentation and creativity in neighborhoods like SoHo and NoLita. Like many other children of the 60s, I was always attracted to SoHo's funky urban-fringe aesthetic. I wandered the canyons of the city venturing into shops such as Parachute, Ad Hoc and D.F. Saunders. Now the streets of SoHo are home to upscale retailers like Polo Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton. Like all of us, I guess, SoHo had to grow up, too.

As rents have risen in SoHo and neighboring areas, the “fringe” has continued to move out around it, first to the East Village and then to Tribeca. Now Chelsea and the meatpacking district are throbbing with hot new nightclubs and restaurants. With the talk of “new urbanism,” Spanish Harlem may be next.

Keeping up with the game in Manhattan is a daunting task even for the natives. Keeping up with trends in retail design, much less forecasting, is an equally daunting task. Since VM SD's New York issue also coincides with the Millennium, we used this opportunity to invite retail designers to gaze into their crystal balls and predict what the new century holds for retail stores. You'll want to check out their “visions.”

Happy New Year!