Dive Brief:
- Barneys New York tapped Stefan Beckman to design a summer pop-up shop on the Madison Avenue store's ninth floor. Measuring 1,630 square feet, the shop-within-a-shop features a range of summer-themed items including beach towels from Beckman's Lateral Objects collection.
- "There's a bit of everything," Beckman told Women's Wear Daily about the concept. "That's the way people shop now." Options range from $18 dinner plates and summer-themed books to a $425 straw hat.
- Beckman told the publication that it was important to use a large space — in this case, the front section of the home area — for the pop-up shop for the greatest visual impact.
Dive Insight:
While a lovely seasonal oasis, this shop-within-a-shop concept is far more pedestrian than some of Barneys previous installations. "The High End," a cannabis boutique, launched at its Beverly Hills flagship earlier this year with luxury glass pipes and vape pens. Meanwhile, its "thedrop@barneys" immersive shop with food, workshops and installations has been offered in New York and Los Angeles in collaboration with streetwear brand Highsnobiety.
Other pop-ups of late have seemed to fall in one of two categories: a splashy debut or a brick-and-mortar test in a new market. At the department-store level, Macy's last year bought Story, a shop that rotates merchandise by theme every few weeks, to inject a similar element of surprise into the shopping experience. In comparison, Barneys Heatwave is simply a summer display with a big name attached (Beckman recently designed Vuitton's cruise collection shown at John F. Kennedy airport).
But with a mix of price points in the selection and a universal theme, Heatwave may draw shoppers to the store's upper levels. This spring, Barneys fought rumors about plans to downsize its Madison Avenue flagship in order to shave a bit off its $30 million per year rent. It closed its Upper West Side location, the smallest of its three New York stores, in early 2018.
