Almost 20 years after closing its original flagship store on Seventh Avenue in Chelsea in 1997, Barneys New York will reopen on Monday in the same storied location. To celebrate its homecoming, the luxury retailer has collaborated with various brands on exclusive limited-edition items — including Malin+Goetz’s newest Bergamot fragrance. “We felt it was really a unique request, in the sense that this was the first national retailer we had, I had worked there, and this scent was something that’s been in our brand all this time, and now has an opportunity to take on life in a different form,” explained Matthew Malin, who together with his partner (in business and in life), Andrew Goetz, also happens to be a longtime Chelsea resident.
Here, Malin and Goetz discuss the original Chelsea Barneys (Bruce Weber and Susan Sarandon sightings), its particular impact on their own brand — and the area’s remarkable transformation over the past 19 years.
Given your selective number of fragrances, what made you choose Bergamot as the newest addition?
ANDREW GOETZ: Bergamot was one of the original scents when we launched our brand 16 years ago. It’s in our body cleanser and also our Vitamin B5 moisturizer.
MATTHEW MALIN: We have customers who speak about it, and ask about it, and if we’re going to be doing more. In the past two years, we’ve really made fragrance more of a focus on the brand, so as we were talking about expanding our range, bergamot felt like the most natural, organic extension in that direction.
GOETZ: The other thing about bergamot is that it’s unisex. It’s very neutral that way. Also, we’re pulling something from our provenance, our heritage — reinventing something.
How has Barneys New York been a part of your brand’s history?
MALIN: When we launched our brand, we launched with our own store, our e-com website and Barneys New York in the United States. That was literally our first days’ worth of business. It was Barneys Madison Avenue, and at the time, they had a small 18th-Street location. That was the Co-Op.
A lot of younger people don’t realize that Barneys New York originally opened down in Chelsea.
GOETZ: What was beautiful about that store was that it happened over a period of time. Originally it was a men’s store, then the women’s store opened, and then they took more and more space. There was a ’70s aesthetic to the penthouse, and an amazing spiral staircase. I remember so well having to go downtown and being fitted for my plaid suit, my baby-blue plaid suit for my bar mitzvah. It’s where every kid went.
MALIN: When I moved to New York, I lived on the Upper East Side, and I was working for Saks Fifth Avenue. I remember friends saying, “Let’s go downtown to Barneys,” and we’d go, and shop, and hang out and have lunch. We’d do that on the weekends, and I remember how special the store was. And then a few years later, I ended up getting a job at Barneys in the cosmetic department. It was such a different world from where I came from.
GOETZ: It was very downtown.
What was your role within Barneys’ cosmetic department?
MALIN: I started there as a buyer. About a year into my tenure — this was ’93 or ’94 — the cosmetic manager for that store left, so they asked if I’d take over the department. One of my responsibilities was that when celebrities or V.I.P.s shopped in the store, I had to wait on them. Susan Sarandon came in regularly. I remember Bruce Weber coming in with his bandanna on, buying candles. I was probably 26 years old at the time, from Michigan. That’s a big deal.
Did that experience inform or inspire your own business in any way?
MALIN: When I was a buyer, they were still developing the beauty department. They carved out a small area that they called the Apothecary. It was two little walls in the corner. They’d source these European pharmaceutical brands. One of them was Neil’s Yard, and Molton Brown before it was really big, and then eventually came Kiehl’s, and the launch of Francois Nars and Stila. It was a really unique opportunity to be part of a family business that was embracing these innovative young start-up businesses.
GOETZ: None of those brands existed on Fifth Avenue, so it was very different. Even the way of shopping was much more … you didn’t feel that sort of sleazy pressure. It made it very special.
You both also happen to be Chelsea residents since 1997. What motivated your move there?
MALIN: At that time, compared to Gramercy or Greenwich Village, it was still pioneering. You got the most bang for your buck. But it was obviously changing. When we bought the apartment, there was a gas station across the street. Within the first year, A.M. Stern built a luxury high-rise building where the gas station was. I don’t know that we foresaw how quickly the change would happen, but it was literally the next year.
But that didn’t dissuade you from opening a business there.
MALIN: One of the things to come from being an Apothecary buyer at Barneys and then having worked for a company like Kiehl’s, which started as a pharmacy, was this sort of historical reference. And so we thought, what if we could open up a store in our neighborhood of Chelsea like these neighborhood apothecaries?
GOETZ: We wanted to do something in our neighborhood, because that was the customer we were serving.
Barneys came and went, and now it’s back. Not every neighborhood institution gets a second life, though. What do you miss the most?
GOETZ: Just north of 23rd, off Sixth Avenue — before they built all those developer high-rises — all those empty lots used to be antique and flea markets. They were all outside, so you could go from one lot to the other. It was great. That was a fun weekend thing to do in Chelsea. I guess everything in New York changes. Chelsea’s not immune to it either.
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SOURCE:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/t-magazine/fashion/barneys-chelsea-malin-goetz.html
