The first thing you notice when you walk into the bright and airy Collina Strada flagship store on Canal Street are the unusual plaster-cast crown mouldings. “I really wanted to do crazy crown moulding that dripped like Dalí, but apparently it was physically impossible,” designer Hillary Taymour explains, sitting on one of the two “boyfriend couches” inside the shop. The couches are covered in her corduroy Watercolor Floral fabric, the same material as the cargo pants she’s wearing. So while there are no dripping clocks or sliced-up eyeballs, there are “flowers, fruits, frogs, turtles, pomegranates, and peppers”—all plastic toys and knickknacks that were lying around the studio, plastered, and carefully turned into mouldings by Ryan Petrus.“We wanted it to feel like a Collina salad,” Taymour added. Petrus also hand-moulded plastered ribbons into letters that spell out COLLINA STRADA. “We’re bringing crown moulding back.”
The second thing you notice inside the shop is the amorphous stone table that anchors the space. It was specially made by Taymour’s friend, the artist Misha Kahn, and it has a playful mushroom-like shape. “I wanted to collaborate with friends who are also in the same level of business that I’m in and can create amazing things, but also make it feel approachable and accessible. I want people to feel welcome,” Taymour explains. Another friend, the artist Justin Hager, hand-painted and shellacked the floor in the same Watercolor Floral print, adding an artful touch that is warm and inviting. “People expect it to be crazy on the walls, but with the revolving door of color and patterns we have here…” she adds, gesturing to a rack full of wonderfully alluring blues, “we can do crazy things elsewhere. Clothes are always going to look best against white.” A painting by Hager titled Roller Coaster also hangs near the cash register.
Taymour founded her label in 2009, but it was in 2019 that she zero-ed in on the colorful, nature-forward, and sustainable themes that propelled her into becoming one of New York’s most influential designers. Her shows have since become celebrations of all the good things things that make humanity good and life worth living. As a designer—and a person—she’s known for wearing her heart on her sleeve (and her layered cargo pants). “I had been looking for a space for four or five years and then I kind of stopped, but once I saw this space was open, I thought, ‘I’m gonna be really sad if I don’t get it.’” The store officially opened yesterday, but she “soft-launched” the space in December, not long after she had signed the lease. “The block is really friendly, [and] even though it’s such a gentrified area, it feels really welcoming–our landlord grew up in this building,”
In the little over a month since the space has been open, she’s learned plenty of new things about her customers. “It’s really interesting to see the retail version of sales and the e-commerce version of sales—they’re completely different girls,” she says. “But we’ve also seen that the e-comm sales in New York have gone up since we opened.” Rounding out the selection of ready-to-wear are her iconic bedazzled reusable water bottles, copies of her Rizzoli monograph I Care A Lotta, I Wear Collina Strada, and her jewelry and shoe collaborations. The store is also the perfect place for one-of-a-kind creations that are too hard to sell online. “It’s a really good way for me to continue to work on our upcycling and deadstock and really have people be able to purchase a true original Collina that I can’t mass-market and sell.”
With her new store Taymour joins a cool roster that includes Eckhaus Latta, Batsheva, Sandy Liang, and Telfar with outposts in the vicinity. The boomlet of independent designer stores is making for an exciting time to shop in New York City.
