Soon, you’ll have one more place to find fashionable clothes and trendy furnishings.
On October 15, Strut! Seasonal Collective opens a designer pop-up shop that features St. Louis fashion and furnishing designers, artists, and creators. Strut will stay open for 10 weeks, until the end of December. The pop-up shop will inhabit the former location of Laurie Solet boutique, across the street from the Galleria (18 The Boulevard St. Louis).
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“Pop-up shops are fairly common in New York City and other fashion hubs,” says Laurie Newcomb, the curator for Strut! pop-up shop. Especially, she notes, with so many brick-and-mortar shops closing down. “It created this gluttony of unusable commercial space that’s sitting there with nobody in them.” Locally, many designers don’t have the money or inventory to start their own store, so Newcomb created this pop-up shop to cater to local designers.
“I really curated this store based on the merchandise,” says Newcomb. Her company, Inspire Strategic, wanted designers and artists that had a strong online presence. Newcomb hopes that if there’s already a natural following with these designers, it will bring people into the store. Some of the designers include Claire Flowers, a well known high-heel and flat company; Sweet Seed Textiles, which makes handprinted scarves and throw pillows; and KayOss Designs, a women’s apparel company. There will also be a weekly rotation of featured designers with smaller inventory, who will do trunk shows.
So you can expect “some designers from St. Louis Fashion Fund, and other designers that didn’t have the inventory or capital to pay a portion of the rent but still want to be featured,” Newcomb says. Newcomb is also hoping that not only will individual buyers love the merchandise, but boutiques will, too.
“I think it would be great for boutiques to see these lines, and see how they did really well, and then want to pick up their line,” says Newcomb. For a lot of the designers, this pop-up shop is their first introduction to the St. Louis community. Newcomb says it’s important that the designers get their name out there.
“From an e-commerce perspective, I want people to be familiar with their brands and go online and purchase their products,” she adds. The designers and artists have a range of styles, and there will be something at Strut! for everyone. After the 10-week pop-up period ends, Newcomb hopes to do something like Strut! again.
“There’s a lot of data I’ve collected to take and execute this in a different space,” she says. “Obviously, there will be learning from this, but I think that this is something that we can replicate.”
For now, she’s focusing on the shop that will open next week, where shoppers will have the time to explore new products. “You jump in and you jump out—that’s the novelty of it.”
Strut! Seasonal Collective will be located at 18 The Boulevard St. Louis. It will be open October 15–December 31, Monday–Thursday from 10 a.m.–3 p.m. and Friday–Sunday from noon–5 p.m.
