Essx Wants to Be New York's Coolest Fashion Store

"Well, this was a pandemic baby," Laura Baker, the co-founder and retail director of Essx, tells Fashionista.

Essx — which cost $7 million to open — is the brainchild of Baker, Abe Pines and Yoel Zagelbaum; the latter two started a streetwear-style subscription box over the pandemic called Scarce that sold backstock and overstocked items. Baker previously worked as merchandising director at Complex Media and formerly had a showroom named Pblc Trde, focused on U.S. and Japanese labels. The newly opened store sits at 140 Essex Street, on New York City's Lower East Side — far away from Madison Avenue's ritzy row of designers stores and a stone's through from SoHo's well-established, highly-commercial retail strip. That was intentional: The founding team wanted the store to have creative energy over a corporate vibe, with brands like Martine Rose, 424, Maison Margiela, Jil Sander, Wales Bonner, Bianca Saunders and Mowalola providing the merchandise.

Within the 7,000-square-foot interior, clothes are spaced apart with a refined precision on the rack. An enclosed room is surrounded by vintage T-shirts from an anonymous seller. Hats by Clayton Patterson adorn a cylinder adjacent to a wall of shoes, which is very specifically designed to fit Chelsea boots, not just sneakers. There's a VIP fitting room with a champagne bar tucked away in the corner, and a gallery and café will open later in the year, as will a program dubbed the Style Studio, through which stylists and editors will be able to borrow items from previous seasons for photo shoots and events like fashion week.

"We miss the discoverability of everything," Baker says. "We work closely with Lauren Ferreira, who's an amazing stylist, and have been listening to editors and [seeing] what they've been pulling. There's a focus on the brands that we don't find here: We know that they exist — we see them at Selfridges and on Ssense, but there's nowhere to actually look in New York."

The goal with the merchandising was to create a space where shoppers could see and buy pieces from these buzzy but hard-to-find-IRL designers, whether high-end or "advanced contemporary." The ideal Essx shopper, according to Baker, has "a strong sense of style, creativity and a lot of individuality." That isn't restricted to a specific age or gender identity.

"We wanted to make sure we were buying things from a very sort of individual way," she says, "shedding that gender of or female and just buying it because we like the product and we believe in the styling behind it."

Essx opens amid upheaval within New York City's retail scene, which has changed quite a bit in recent years. So many of the greats are gone: Opening Ceremony closed up shop in January 2020, while Barneys shut all its doors by February 2020; Lord & Taylor followed during 2021, in a chain of closures that sparked concerns of a "retail apocalypse." But things may be turning around. After all, NYC staple Century 21 re-opened in May. Perhaps Essx's opening hints at something.

"I think retail is going to come back," Baker says. "What I'm hoping is that the retailers that are here have our support, and that we can bring more shoppers back to New York. We can bring people that are excited about retail again, because they might be looking at the retailers that we're neighboring with with fresh set of eyes."

Walking into the store feels like entering a fashion-y playground, designed for adventure, which is meant to entice shoppers to learn about new brands and products. "Stylists" working in the store will help customers explore further, while the café and gallery will offer more activity-based spaces to hang out, attend events and connect with others. There will be an an e-commerce shop with curated lists based on picks by Essx's network of stylists, and an option to subscribe to Scarce.

Essx's home, Manhattan's Lower East Side, is a storied area: Historically a working-class neighborhood, it grew increasingly gentrified in the early aughts, after serving as a ground zero for many artists and a burgeoning nightlife scene. Essx wants to extend that legacy.

"The Lower East Side was specific to us because there's still that very personal experience," Baker says. "There's a lot of mom-and-pop businesses and shops around here. We really wanted it to feel like you can come in and discover something, feel something, have a creative moment."

Essx plans to work with local businesses like Somtum Der and hire locally through the Henry Street Settlement as part of its efforts to embed itself into the community. Even the architecture firm the store worked with, Leong and Leong, is local.

Though Essx will be unique in its magnitude, the neighborhood isn't completely devoid of fashion retail. Younger stores like Frankie Shop, Sandy Liang and Daily Paper have opened their doors there in recent years.

"What I miss in retail is being able to go to a store and discover something," Baker says. "I miss being able to talk to somebody who could just get on my level and just have one-on-one." Hopefully, Essx can offer just that.

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