La Ligne Opens First West Coast Store, Plots Expansion
The Marin knit has arrived at Marin.
La Ligne, the mariner stripe knitwear, denim and contemporary brand founded by former Vogue editors Valerie Macaulay and Meredith Melling and former Rag & Bone head of business development Molly Howard, has opened its first West Coast store at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur, Calif.
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Interior designer Lien Luu was commissioned to create a warm environment resembling a Parisian apartment for the 1,120-square-foot location, mirroring the brand’s shops in New York City, Dallas, Palm Beach, Fla., and Greenwich, Conn., while adding coastal design elements specific to Marin. La Ligne’s stripe-centric design philosophy, as seen on its bestselling Marin knit, is referenced throughout.
“In our retail strategy we have come to realize that there are certain markets we know we want to be, but there are also certain areas within those markets that we know we want to be,” said Melling of Jim Rosenfield’s California-based Country Mart retail developments. La Ligne popped up in the Brentwood Country Mart over the summer, and snapped up the open space in Marin as soon as it became available.
“Historically we’ve done trunk shows in the area and they always perform incredibly well,” she continued.
“Bringing adjacencies that are not necessarily other fashion retail spaces, but food and fitness and lifestyle and bringing that whole combination of things to life, [Jim] does that in a really unique way,” Howard said. “It’s also a total family affair…and that’s very much in line with like our customer and the life that she’s juggling. A lot of our stores — even on Madison Avenue — become part of her everyday as opposed to a shopping destination. It’s ‘this is where I go to get my coffee in the morning and I get my blowout and drop the kids off at school, and I walk by La Ligne and check out what’s new.'”
La Ligne drops new products every Tuesday, and store windows change every week, too. The brand now has five stores, and just signed a lease for its sixth on Newbury Street in Boston.
The Marin store features the fall collection offering dresses in seasonal colors and in-house designed prints, including the bestselling Madeleine ($395) and Vivian ($350) dresses, seasonless essentials and evergreen styles such as the Marin sweater ($295), Fitted Lean Lines sweater ($275) and denim.
Melling calls Northern California perfect sweater territory because of the cool but not cold climate. “We did a custom colorway of the Marin sweater, collaborating with the the Country Mart team,” she added of the store exclusive in mustard and cream stripes.
La Ligne was established in 2016 first as a knitwear brand, but since has expanded into ready-to-wear, denim, accessories and sleepwear, with dresses comprising 60 percent of sales.
They’ve cultivated a celebrity fan club with their campaigns, casting multifaceted women including Paulina Porizkova, who is outspoken about aging; Olivia Munn, who is outspoken about Asian hate; Selma Blair, who has been outspoken about her MS, and Amy Schumer, who is outspoken about everything.
The partners are looking for more store locations in Los Angeles, in secondary markets and in the South, but don’t have a magic number in mind.
“We’re opening them as fast as we can. We just expanded our retail team internally to a second hire. So there’s only so much we can do but the stores have just been incredible for us. All of our stores are profitable and give us the best customer research,” Howard said.
“I think because there’s so much out there online now — and I am guilty of this as a shopper — that you kind of expect the product to be less than…because there’s so much wizardry that by the time you receive it, you’re like, ‘Oh, this isn’t really remotely what I thought it would be,'” Melling said. “I really think that people have the opposite experience when they walk into our store.…We’re just so excited to hear people say ‘I didn’t realize the quality was this good because the price was this.'”
For 2024, retail will be a focus, and wholesale, too.
“We want to keep wholesale somewhere around 20 percent of the business, and then keep direct around 80 percent. But as the business grows online and in our retail as well, we want to mimic that with some new accounts, so we’re opening up with Shopbop, and then we’re talking to a bunch of new smaller specialty stores. Our business has been growing really strong with Net-a-porter and Matches, which is exciting as we start to think about international expansion,” Howard said.
With the success of denim, which launched last February, they are also thinking about new categories. “We have some stuff in mind. We’ve been speaking to a lot of people and gotten a lot of opinions. I think there will be a solid plan in place for that next year, which is exciting.”
In January, to celebrate seven years in business, they will launch an anniversary capsule collection of seven pieces crowdsourced through their loyal customers.
“Because we have so many perennial styles but then we also have some more seasonal offerings, we asked them what styles they missed the most,” Melling said.
One was the Boudoir pant, coming back alongside the Boudoir slip and shirt. “It’s a silk pant that could read as a pajama pant but is supposed to be worn out,” Howard said. “I wore it to the Met ball in 2016.”
“And then she wore the pant on a flight the next day, so it perfectly exemplifies the versatility. We’re excited that people wanted those back,” Melling said. Other styles returning are the Bardot dress, Lean Lines Rainbow top, Batstien sweater and Martha cardigan.
What’s driving La Ligne’s success?
“A common dilemma with women is that they have a closet full of clothes that they never wear but they go back to these few pieces over and over again. And one of my favorite things is when people say they’ve worn one of our sweaters three days in a row,” Melling said. “I think we’ve really nailed the key everyday item.”
For holiday, they debuted more occasion dressing, too, including a sequin straight midi Soiree skirt that sold out.
“It’s been super successful,” Melling said. “Those are the kinds of things that are really exciting to see because we’re evolving and our customers are continuing to come to us for more.”
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