Pop-up stores on the Lower East Side are no recent phenomenon, but a new designer retailer is bringing a fresh take to displaying designers’ work. Komune, a fashion collective featuring up-and-coming brands, greets customers with house beats and fashion-turned-art-installations splayed across the space.
The shop, located on 92 Orchard St., hosted an exclusive party the night before its Sept. 1 opening date, introducing its collection of 16 emerging designers to the New York City fashion scene.
The project is the brainchild of two long-term friends, Martin Li, an undergraduate student at NYU Stern, and Brandon Fogarty, a Northeastern University alum.
“We’ve always wanted to work in fashion,” Li said. “What always mattered to us was to support designers who lacked the spotlight.”
Li and Fogarty’s vision for the space involves combining rising talent with in-store retail experiences. While Komune now hosts the works of 16 designers, the project struggled to get off the ground in its early days.
“It was kind of a shitshow,” Li said. “We had zero reputation when we began. Zero followers. Zero presence. It took lots of handshakes, Zoom meetings and pitches.”
As the store began to grow, Li and Fogarty reached out to their peers to create the current team — a bunch of university kids who like contemporary fashion and fell in love with the Komune initiative — bringing up-and-coming designers into the space and supporting emerging work they adored.
“Komune’s goal is to create that long-term following that will hopefully evolve these creators past ‘small’ and ‘emerging’ and into a more solidified brand,” Li said. “In our opinion, there is way too much good work out there that goes unnoticed because there is no one willing to take a chance on it, and that is what we are. This lofty, idealistic space wants to do something a little differently.”
Making the most of a small space, Komune designs each corner to be a delicate slice of the Lower East Side store to give breathing room to the idiosyncrasies of each brand. Clothes hang on racks, but Komune also installs garments as art pieces.
Pipes extended from the walls, a plethora of distressed knits, the technological aesthetics of ÆSyntyx and the masterfully creased leather designs from brands like Greco and gsongim adorn the shop’s walls. Studio Wenjüe Lu’s bags playfully descend upon customers from above, and Jordan Arthur Smith’s Exo Rhizome Overlay Puffer protrudes from the ceiling like a twisting bone.
Smith was eye-catching among an already well-dressed crowd, wearing his own brand from head to toe. Smith’s abstract silhouettes contours the natural and flowy linings on his garments.
“I wanted to explore the post-human form,” Smith said. “To do that, I made design patterns based on plastered sculptures I handmade.”
Smith channels his experimental attitude to his creation. Smith dyes his works with tea and iron to fabricate pieces that are both organic and utilitarian — in fact, all of his pieces are reversible.
“My goal is to create something like a capsule wardrobe,” Smith said. “You have, maybe, a set of this amount of pieces, but with its ability to reverse into something like a different color, you now have unlimited options.”
Komune constructs a space that embraces today’s emerging designers in a way that highlights their unique visual appeal, and allows the consumer to access designers who challenge the limits of wearable design.
Komune’s pop-up located on 92 Orchard St. lasts through September.
Contact Deborah Kwong at [email protected]
