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Save this story Save Story Save this story It’s little more than 24 hours until Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta are scheduled to fling open the doors to their new store at 27 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, and there’s still much to be done. “There are little scuffs on the floor,” sighs Latta. “Don’t mention those.”
“It’s a new concept,” jokes Eckhaus as we pass by the two exposed dressing rooms, waiting for their curtains to be delivered. “It’s all about sexy! It’s like the Barneys Warehouse Sale!”
Looking at the suspended clothes bar filled with fall’s new arrivals, Latta cracked: “Ten minutes ago, we were like … ‘We should hang some clothes. ”
“For us, a store is much more about building a world than, like, just some strategically fancy place,” Latta said. “We love retail, we love brick and mortar.”
It’s this charming make-it-up-as-you-go ethos that renders the duo’s brand, Eckhaus Latta , so bewitching. It’s a reflection of the real-world cool they’ve been able to evoke season after season, a stark contrast to overly-polished impersonal megabrands. While they may be prepping to celebrate 15 years in business and coming off a couple of high-profile collaborations (with Mango and J.Crew ), plus a hot streak of increasingly finessed runway shows, the designers have still retained their feisty founding spirit. (I chuckle remembering, during a conversation this summer, when Eckhaus referred to themselves as a “geriatric independent small brand.”)
This is hardly the duo’s first dalliance with retail; in fact, physical stores have long been part of the business model. They opened their first shop in Los Angeles , where Latta is based, back in 2016, and one on the second floor of a buzzy Chinatown mall in 2018 (Eckhaus is based in New York). But in the eight years since that location opened its doors, the brand has grown, and the mall has evolved from small art galleries into a vintage mecca. “There were window displays of people selling second-hand Eckhaus Latta next door,” laughs Latta. So they felt it was time to look for new digs.
“For us, a store is much more about building a world than, like, just some strategically fancy place,” Latta said. “We love retail, we love brick and mortar.”
Latta is something of a pathological real estate hunter and found this space earlier this year through a friend of a friend. The pair first visited on the morning of their fall 2026 show in February, and signed a deal in August. Since then, it’s been a six-week mad dash to get the new place ready for opening. It gives them more than double the selling space of their previous location and will bring together retail, the design studio, storage for their personal archive, a photo studio, and a stock room, all under one roof. “It’s our epicenter,” Latta said. “We’re condensing from seven different leases into one.”
Because the new storefront had not previously been set up as a street-facing commercial property, it needed substantial work, including plumbing and electrical, in addition to the usual architectural flourishes. For that, they’ve tapped their network of creative friends, like their in-house fit model, Camilla Deterre, who served as project manager, and Latta’s childhood friend, Emma Price, their architect who also works on the interiors. Sophie Stone handles the flowers and the painted rope-and-cardboard art pieces that serve as rugs. “These are people we speak to and hang out with and work with on a daily basis,” said Latta. “They’re also designers, architects, trained, skilled professionals.”
“It’s cool to have just these expansions of how we work with our friends,” added Eckhaus.
“Sometimes there are six people talking about one rug and arguing, which is fun,” Latta continued. “And then other times it feels really clear. But I think there’s not a singular vision, and I think it’s very, as Mike has said, ‘Goldilocks,’ where it’s like we figure out the happy medium in a lot of different ways from a lot of different POVs, and we don’t need to consider it finished really, ever.”
Now there are rails suspended from the ceiling and an honest-to-goodness cash register in the front, with dressing rooms and more standing racks in the back half of the space, totaling 940 square feet. Behind that is the studio, an extra 700 square feet complete with a skylight. Unexpected colors—a brand signature—are expressed in the paint choices: pale yellow walls and creamy gray floors (Farrow & Ball’s “New White” and “Lamp Room Gray,” respectively). Furniture was sourced by their friend David Lê and given custom touches, like an ottoman with a brushed shearling topper sourced from Latta’s hometown of Santa Cruz.
Indeed, while they are racing toward the finish line—the store will open its doors tomorrow morning, after an opening party later tonight—the duo considers the space less of a fixed idea than an ongoing project.
“That’s the thing we’re thinking about, too: how things adapt,” said Latta. “We’re excited about them, but maybe it’s something we’re going to want to change around more frequently. It’s nice to not feel so concrete, and, like we were saying, fluid, about a process.”
Take the space-age silver-painted cinder block facade, with its craggy stones and weathered AC units giving it a gritty, wonky appearance.
Take the space-age silver-painted cinder block facade, with its craggy stones and weathered AC units giving it a gritty, wonky appearance. “At first we were like, ‘We need to get rid of everything.’ And then we were like, ‘This rocks. This is a story of the neighborhood.’ We don’t want to eliminate it yet and don’t need to yet. It’s going to cost a lot of money to replace the facade. Let’s wait and do it when the feeling's right and when we’re done and sick of it.”
Latta works directly adjacent to the Los Angeles shop, but this will be Eckhaus’s first time doing the same. “Sometimes from where I’m sitting, I can hear people in the dressing room giving notes,” Latta said. “I love it, and our retail staff comes back, and it’s like, ‘Oh, she really didn’t like that color.’ It’s just nice to have the feedback, and it’s not a criticism. I think it’ll be really good for Mike to have that too.”
“I can chase people out of the store,” he quipped.
And how do they feel about the reactions to their recent collection, which were overwhelmingly positive, with some calling them out as a highlight of New York Fashion Week? “We feel really supported,” Latta said.
“Part of our excitement is that we’ve seen an immense amount of growth in our direct-to-consumer business. “There’s something about that that feels nice—the more things that are under your control [the better], because we know the industry is so volatile right now.”
“I think we’re ready to take some big steps,” she added. “We’re open to a lot of different things.”
“We’re looking for investment,” Latta said.
“We should say that out loud,” Eckhaus added. “Email us!”
Source: Lifestyle
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