In Lane Bryant’s latest New York outpost, a nearly 8000-square-foot flagship on 34th Street, a shopper can adjust the fitting room lighting with a simple swipe of her finger on the mirror. Her three lighting options – all dimmable, of course – are daylight, office and evening.
The intent is clear: to give guests a sense of how a blouse or skirt will look in a particular environment. Those extra lighting perks are also part of the plus-size apparel retailer’s strong focus on outfitting. “Our goal,” says Chris Trinckler, director of store planning and design for Charming Shoppes Inc. (Columbus), Lane Bryant’s parent company, “is to help our customer put together outfits.”
To further advance this goal, Trinckler and the in-house design team introduced a completely new fixture assortment throughout the store. Clothes are displayed in mass wardrobes that were designed with a solid base (ideal for featuring footwear) and a merchandising end cap for coordinated accessories such as jewelry and hats. Display tables for pants, fabricated in warm oak, include a versatile puck system on the top that enables the retailer to change out hardware for various visual display arrangements (think torso forms dressed in complementary tops and accessories or T-bar displays), plus pull-out shelving underneath for easy access to additional sizes and styles.
The retailer also refined its plus-size mannequins, choosing forms and figures with a modern, pearlescent finish and bolder, more fashion-forward poses.
“Our target customer is happy, confident and sexy,” says Trinckler. “And the new store design is a celebration of elegant curves, stylish lines and sensual shapes.”
One such shape fills the shop’s atrium: A grouping of purple acrylic discs suspended from the ceiling pulls the customer’s eye up to the trendy Cacique intimate apparel and sleepwear brand on the mezzanine level, which is accessed via a curving grand staircase. Going forward, the Cacique brand will live within all new Lane Bryant locations; the two stores had previously existed in a side-by-side format. This pairing places an entire look, unmentionables and all, at the shopper’s fingertips – just swipe for the desired light.
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Project Source List
Retailer/Design: Charming Shoppes Inc., Bensalem, Pa.; Alan Pellman, vp store design/construction; Chris Trinckler, director of store design; Jenn Krack, senior designer; Jon Heisey, manager, store planning; Larry Shelton, sr. manager procurement; Rod McCormick, sr. project manager; Jay Pew, director of construction
Design/Architecture
Callison, New York
Mannequins
Patina-V, City of Industry, Calif.
Ceilings
3Form, New York
Fixtures
MG Concepts New York
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Lighting
Capital Lighting, Columbus, Ohio
Signage/Graphics
Visual Impulse Elk Grove Village, Ill.
Wallcoverings and Materials
Astek Inc., Van Nuys, Calif.
General Contractor
B.R. Fries, New York
Photography: Mark A. Steele Photography, Columbus, Ohio