Opening in July, the Los Angeles GANT Rugger store will be the brand’s first outpost on the West Coast. Located at 1308 Abbot Kinney Blvd in Los Angeles’ iconic beachfront Venice neighborhood, the 1,700- square-foot store will sell both the GANT Rugger and the men’s and women’s GANT by Michael Bastian collections. Departing from existing GANT Rugger stores in New York City, the GANT Rugger L.A. location will include light modernist touches while still maintaining a vintage feel. Décor will be clean and crisp mixed with a mid-century 1950’s style. “We felt it was important to fully integrate our first west coast store into the local Venice neighborhood. We’re sourcing new fixtures from local craftsmen, and working with dealers from the Rose Bowl market on design elements,” added Arbuthnot.
By August, GANT will open its first New England store on Boston’s premier Newbury Street. Chosen for its unique mixture of college students, tourists, young professionals and old East Coast heritage, the city of Boston is a perfect fit. Located at 324 Newbury, the 2,000 square-foot GANT store will reside inside a street-level brick building and will retain its original historic elements with selected updates including white wainscoated walls, subway tiles and both vintage and artisan fixtures and furniture.
Finally in September, GANT will unveil a company store in Georgetown at 3239 M Street. The 2,000 square-foot GANT store and will also carry a curated selection across all brands. A prime retail location in a historic neighborhood with abundant lighting and large scale skylights, the space was once a historic live jazz bar called Saloun and will feature design elements similar to the Boston location.
Georgetown’s M Street and Boston’s Newbury Street locations will be uniquely designed for the United States market, and will incorporate new GANT store design elements that may appear in future global retail concepts for the company. The new store design will prominantly feature a centerpiece fixture that will showcase a hand picked assortment of shirt styles for both display purposes and folded stock. Additionally, both locations will offer a curated selected from all collections including GANT, GANT Rugger and GANT by Michael Bastian’s men’s and women’s collections.
“The shirt wall will instantly commmunicate to shoppers our origins as the leading US shirtmaker – this category is our bread and butter and we will always shine a light on that classicication at retail.” adds Arbuthnot.
To support the doubling of the company’s US retail presence, a slate of official events are being planned for the fall and will include designer appearances and regional ambassador programs. The three stores join GANT’s existing retail locations including two GANT Rugger neighborhood shops and a 5th Avenue flagship in New York City as well as a GANT Campus Store at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where GANT was founded in 1949.
