Rachel Comey Opens Up

While fashion designer Rachel Comey credits “fate, I guess” as the force behind her new SoHo store, it’s clear that more strategic moves were at play, as well. Take the collaboration with Brooklyn-based architect Elizabeth Roberts, who used cement, stone, and wood to bring the outer-borough aesthetic to one of Manhattan’s central shopping streets. And then there was Comey’se collaboration with interior designer Charles De Lisle, who brought casual, homey touches such as overgrown flowers and mahogany leather seating into the minimalist space. “As with our collection,” Comey explained, “we’d start with one material that we loved, and figure out how to use it, and then what works with it. In that way the store started to come together.”

Comey’s favorite part is the shoe display—a gray-and-white marble block in the store’s center, directly beneath one of two wooden skylights. “We had it in our heads for a long time, and when we made it came out exactly as we’d all hoped,” she said.

Throughout the 15 years that the designer has lived and worked in SoHo, she has had her eye on the rare, one-story space that her shop now occupies. “I was actually a customer of the rug store that was in its place,” she said. “It was an easy choice to open here, I just had to convince the landlord to pick me!”

Rachel Comey, 95 Crosby Street, New York.