Closed, the German Clothing Label, Opens First U.S. Store
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Closed is a high-end denim and casualwear label with about 50 stores in Europe.
But it has taken the German brand more than 40 years to open its first U.S. store, which debuted July 1 in Los Angeles.
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The 1,044-square-foot space is located at Platform LA, an upscale contemporary boutique shopping center concentrating on unique retail and restaurant offerings in Culver City, California.
Culver City, just west of L.A., is growing into one of the hippest spots in the L.A. area. Many creative office spaces are popping up to house up-and-coming companies such as Beats Music and TikTok. Sony Pictures Studios, housed in the former MGM headquarters, dominates the entertainment scene.
A few blocks away is the Helms Bakery District, where the renowned industrial bakery operated from 1931 to 1969 before the historic buildings were converted to restaurants, home furnishing retailers and interior design showrooms.
It is only fitting that L.A. would be the site for Closed’s first U.S. store. In 2007, the company began its marketing foray to the U.S. by doing a L.A. styling tour. The tour was immediately successful when the label saw a pair of it jeans being worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in the movie “Sex and the City.”
“Then we had some of L.A.’s best-known retailers hearing about us, and they became interested in the brand,” said Nadler, the company’s managing partner who moved with his family from Germany to L.A. to help shape the store.
The new Closed outpost at 8850 Washington Boulevard has a clean, modern look with concrete floors and bright yellow walls that evoke sunny days in California or in Italy, where the brand’s denim products are made. The striped textiles on the upholstered chairs are reminiscent of beach chairs. On the walls are large-formatted photos of Italian seaside locations.
Well-curated offerings of sweaters, pants and shirts from the men’s and women’s collections dot the racks and shelves. Denim jeans are heavily represented on shelves that line one wall.
For the opening, Closed produced a special capsule collection of sweatshirts, T-shirts and denim available only at the new space. “We are bringing in accessories made only in Europe to blend with our strategy of showing a European brand,” Nadler said, pointing out the SuperDuper hats from Italy and candles, Frisbees and coffee-table books with a European origin.
Erik Undehn
The Closed store is the first of four or five outposts that could be coming to the L.A. area. Closed is also scouting a New York location and, perhaps, one in Miami down the road. “We are seeing now that people really care about physical brick-and-mortar shopping,” Nadler said. Three years ago, Closed opened its first U.S. online shop.
Closed started distributing its merchandise to the U.S. in 2010, taking a showroom at the Cooper Design Space in the Los Angeles Fashion District. It concentrated on selling to select multibrand stores. One of the first L.A. boutiques to carry the brand was American Rag Cie, a longtime popular denim and casualwear store with a French vibe on La Brea Avenue.
Now the brand is at seven Nordstrom locations and several high-end boutiques including Intermix, ShopBop and Pamela Robbins in New York City and American Rag Cie, Fred Segal, Whittmore, Teller and Optimist in the L.A. area.
Closed has been producing all its denim clothing in Italy since it was founded in 1978 by French designers Marithé and François Girbaud. The designers sold the company out of bankruptcy in the early ’90s to two Hamburg-based businessmen — Günther Giers and Hans Leplow. In 2009, the company was taken over by Giers’ son Gordon and his friends Nadler and Hans Redlefsen. They are co-chief executive officers.
The Closed owners were adamant about keeping denim production in Italy while other clothing is made primarily in Turkey, Romania and Portugal. For its blue jeans, the denim comes from the Candiani mill near Milan. The blue jeans are sewn at two factories in Rimini on the Adriatic Sea. Then they are washed and treated in a factory near Venice.
Keeping that high quality of craftsmanship has been important to the German brand. It also helps explain why its denim, which makes up about one-third of the company’s revenues, sells for $230 to $398.
High quality denim seemed a natural fit for denim-centric L.A. and a new store. “L.A. is where Closed started its U.S. operations,” Nadler said, “and it feels very natural to come back here for our first-ever retail footprint.”
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