Our New York flagship opens on Greene Street
Apple & Ivey New York opens at 112 Greene Street in SoHo, in a cast-iron building from 1872. It is our largest boutique, four floors arranged around a central staircase, with an alterations atelier and repair desk at the top and a very good coffee bar at the bottom.
We spent eighteen months finding the building and another year restoring it. Here is what you will find inside, and why we chose a structure that is more than 150 years old.
A cast-iron building
Greene Street has the densest run of cast-iron façades in the world, and number 112 is a modest, well-preserved example. Its columns, window frames and cornice were cast in sections at a foundry in the 1870s and bolted to the front of the building, a technique that made SoHo’s warehouses fast to build and cheap to decorate. The façade is painted a pale stone grey, as the originals were, to imitate a carved limestone the building could never have afforded.
The interior was a textile warehouse for most of its first century, which feels right. The floors are the original maple boards, sanded back but not refinished, and still marked in places where heavy bolts of cloth were dragged to the freight lift. The cast-iron columns that run up through each floor are left exposed, and the ceilings are a little over four metres high.
We took more out than we put in. The best thing you can do with a building like this is get out of its way and let the iron and the light do the work.
— Nadia Brennan, Brennan-Ko Architects
What’s inside
Womenswear, menswear and accessories over three floors, with an alterations atelier and repair desk on the fourth. The ground floor carries accessories and the coffee bar; the second floor is womenswear; the third is menswear, with a long wall of men’s coats and jackets including the Waxed Cotton Field Jacket and the loden overcoats.
The fitting rooms are large, lined in oak and lit from above by the building’s original skylight, so you see a garment in something close to daylight. Every floor has a stylist, and every boutique offers styling appointments, alterations, repairs and click-and-collect, which here can be picked up from a counter by the front door.
The atelier and repair desk
The fourth floor is where the building earns its keep. It holds a working alterations atelier with three tailors, two industrial sewing machines, a cuff press and a long cutting table, and next to it a repair desk where anyone can bring in an Apple & Ivey coat. Repairs on our coats are free for life, and the desk keeps a small library of cloth from each season so that patches and replacement cuffs can be cut from the original fabric.
Our store manager, Marcus Bell, insisted that the atelier be visible rather than hidden in a back room, so there is a glass wall between the fitting area and the workroom. You can watch a hem being pressed while you wait for it. On the far wall hang the atelier’s tools, shears, tailor’s chalk, a row of wooden clappers, each one labelled with the name of the tailor who uses it, because in a good workroom nobody borrows anyone else’s scissors.
The coffee bar
The coffee bar runs along the back of the ground floor, with eight stools and a counter made from a single length of reclaimed Douglas fir pulled from the building’s old joists. The beans come from a small roaster in Red Hook, and the menu is short: espresso, filter, a very good cortado and a pastry or two from a bakery on Thompson Street.
It is open to everyone, not only customers, and it has already become a meeting point for people waiting on alterations. The baristas were trained alongside the boutique team, so if you ask them where the knitwear is, they will tell you, and probably which colour to try. Ivey Circle members booked in for a fitting get their coffee on the house.
Opening hours
Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 19:00, Sunday 11:00 to 18:00. A few practical notes for your first visit:
- The nearest subway stations are Prince Street and Spring Street, each a short walk away.
- The building has a lift to every floor, including the atelier.
- Private appointments before opening can be booked through The Ivey Circle.
- The repair desk takes walk-ins, but Saturdays are busy, so arrive early.
Come and see the building. And if you need something to carry home, the Structured Leather Tote is waiting on the ground floor.
