EXCLUSIVE: Mackage Sets Paris Fashion Week Pop-up Ahead of Flagship Opening
Mackage, the Montreal-based luxury lifestyle brand, is launching a pop-up store during Paris Fashion Week as it gears up to open its first flagship in the French capital. The temporary space, designed by Crosby Studios, will be open from Sept. 26 to 28 at 5, Cité Dupetit-Thouars in the Marais district.
The walls will be clad in a silver foil pattern inspired by the brand’s signature metallic down puffer to create an immersive, tactile experience evocative of the weightlessness of the jackets. The space will include a bed, designed to symbolize the comfort, durability and warmth of the Canadian label’s designs.
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“We basically wanted to create this digital-looking room,” said Mackage cofounder and creative director Eran Elfassy, saying he liked Crosby Studios founder Harry Nuriev’s way of recontextualizing ordinary elements through stark color and streamlined design. “We liked his simple approach, but yet dramatic.”
Tanya Golesic, chief executive officer of Mackage, said Crosby Studios captured the sensuality of the puffers. “In the U.S., instead of calling it a pop-up, we call it a puff-up,” she said. “It’s really about the shape and how soft and how dramatic the space is, really using that DNA in a design world.”
The pop-up is a prelude to the opening in November of a permanent boutique located at 418 Rue Saint-Honoré, a stone’s throw from fellow outerwear specialist Canada Goose, and across the street from Michael Kors. “Obviously, Saint-Honoré is synonymous with luxury so we are in an amazing neighborhood with world-class luxury brands,” Golesic said.
Designed by Toronto-based commercial interior design firm Burdifilek, the flagship will feature a tonal palette set off with industrial materials. “We’ve worked with them to do in the design something that we thought that would really complement the coats, something that’s also at the same time kind of neutral and not too busy, so the coats are pretty much what’s shining in it,” Elfassy said.
Mackage is enjoying strong momentum in France, where it is available in 85 points of sale, including department stores Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, Golesic said. “France is one of our leading countries in terms of volume in Europe,” she said.
“Ski is also a quite a large percentage of our business in France. We’ve also partnered with two of our wholesale accounts, and we will be doing ski pop-ups this winter in Courchevel and Megève, so continuing to underscore the luxury and the destination part of our brand, because our clients do travel,” she added.
The brand, which has more than 500 points of distribution worldwide, including 19 stand-alone stores, is seeing strong growth so far this year, although Golesic declined to confirm an earlier target of 40 percent sales growth in 2022.
“We are very pleased with our performance. We are seeing double-digit sales increases year-over-year, in addition to expansion into other countries like Korea,” she said.
Mackage has registered growth in China and Japan, and is surfing on strong demand in the U.S. to open additional locations, including a planned store in Manhasset, New York, in October. It also plans to upgrade its London store to a larger flagship, set to open next year.
While the company is working toward B Corp certification, it has yet to integrate sustainability into its store design.
“There are so many different boxes that you have to tick in terms of regulations, and that we need to still achieve, so we’re not there from a store standpoint yet, but we hope to announce, in the next 12 to 24 months, a quite comprehensive plan around that exact area,” Golesic said.
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