By the Namesake Opens First Retail Location
This month, Canadian custom leather fashion brand By the Namesake opened the doors to its first retail space at 95 Florence Street in Toronto, Canada.
Designer and founder Rosa Halpern signed the lease to the 3,000-square-foot location in 2020, “and then the world shut down,” she told WWD. Redesigning the space during the pandemic, in collaboration with interior designer Ali Budd and her husband’s company, Against the Grain Remodeling, soon became a “silver lining” project.
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“The concept for the space was always to do a conceptual retail space mixed with our production and offices — it’s a very large space. Something we’ve always loved is that our old [studio] space was both our customer-facing experience as well as our production, so we wanted to maintain that,” she said.
The new bi-level space features a custom leather lounge for her signature, customizable leather fashions (by private appointment), a street-facing lifestyle boutique, production facility and office. Within the lifestyle boutique, Halpern is selling off-the-rack leather jackets and silk sets, for the first time, alongside an expanded offering of lifestyle and small homegoods.
“A lot of the items we are selling out of the space came about from that COVID-19 exploration for our own home and spaces. It’s been really fun to have that vision of two years ago come to fruition,” Halpern said of the expansion, which ranges from small leather accessories and candles to mixed-media pillows and a leather croc embossed punching bag, with the items priced from $40 to $800.
“We’re staying true to the custom nature of Namesake, but are bringing that now to home goods, which are able to be customized on the spot; we have a new monogram machine [in-store]. Bringing that custom experience to items for your home while staying true to the leather — a lot of which are made using scraps and excess materials from our jacket production.”
