Isabel Marant opens first Miami and Oslo retail locations

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Apr 12, 2017

Isabel Marant is swiftly expanding her retail presence with the opening of her first stores in Miami, Florida and Oslo, Norway. With the addition of the two stores, the Paris-based fashion house now operates 25 retail locations.

  
The Miami store, located at 175 N.E. 40th Street, stands at 1,500 square feet on the ground floor of the Garden Lounge Building in the city’s Design District. French architect Laurent Deroo designed the store interior and drew inspiration from the minimal and modernist 1950s and 1960s French brutalist movement. A modern chandelier hangs from a textile-on-cork ceiling above wool sofas, thin racks displaying the label’s main line, Etoile and accessories collections, and white wooden suspended partitions.
 
Marant tapped French sculptor and frequent collaborator Arnold Goron to create an installation in store that celebrates the arrival of spring. Goron, who has decorated windows for Isabel Marant stores in the past, created a rotating fan with long stems and colored petals to make a “colorful fresh and alive installation” that feels like nature due to its random movement. He said, “The movements of the petals are totally unpredictable and they make the installation hypnotic.”

 
The 860-square-foot Oslo store, which opened on March 30, also houses Marant’s main line, Etoile, and accessories collections, and much like the label’s additional retail locations, the store draws inspiration from the local culture. The central focus of the interior is a black box made out of pine tar, a typical Scandinavian material also known as ‘Archangel tar’. Artists from Oslo also furnished the interior of the Prinsens Gate retail location.
 
Montefiore Investment acquired a 51% stake in Isabel Marant in 2016. The investment will aid the brand in its retail distribution expansion. Isabel Marant achieved just under $160 million (150 million euros) in revenues in 2015, 80% of which came from sales outside of France.

In November, the Parisian label appointed Anouck Duranteau-Loeper as its new Deputy CEO. Duranteau-Loeper is working closely with CEO Sophie Duruflé and with Retail Director Nathalie Chemouny.

Founded in 1994, Isabel Marant opened its first boutique in Paris, and later opened three more locations in the city. The fashion label currently operates stores in France, Spain, Denmark, Lebanon, Dubai, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the US and the UK.