EXCLUSIVE: Gigi Hadid on Her ‘Personal’ Guest in Residence Store in Beverly Hills
Gigi Hadid now has a second home for Guest in Residence, and she’s hoping her guests will linger. The cashmere purveyor has opened its doors in Beverly Hills, and like its New York City counterpart, was designed with a homey warmth that mirrors the feeling of walking into Hadid’s personal dwelling.
“Really, it’s the same feeling,” Hadid told WWD exclusively of how the debut West Coast brick-and-mortar compares to the Bond Street flagship that opened a year ago. “We want people to walk into our stores and feel like they’re in a creative friend’s home. We want people to feel comfortable: Sit down, play a game of chess, look around at the art and there’s an ease to it.”
More from WWD
In the 1,000-square-foot store, designed by Hadid and Yaoska Interiors — which imparted the same coziness to Bond Street — visitors can sink into plaid armchairs aside a fireplace flanked by bookshelves filled with weathered novels, or retreat onto a velvet couch beneath artwork created by Hadid’s friend, Austyn Weiner. “The painting is from a collection that I also have a piece from in my house, so that feels really personal,” Hadid said of the artwork, adding, “It’s really special to have a friend’s painting in the store. Guest in Residence, to me, is a community of creative people. So for us to be able to bring those friends in and out of helping us create this world for Guest in Residence is really special and emotional.”
The connection between Hadid’s own home and the Guest in Residence store in Los Angeles isn’t coincidental; Hadid approached the interior design for both with similar considerations. “I’m very much a person who loves mixing in my own home,” the founder and creative director explained. “I love mixing natural wood on the walls with tchotchkes, art and color — like an industrial funk, I would call it. Our stores are a little bit more elevated than that, but it comes from something that makes me feel at home, and is what you would feel if you walked into my house.”
The Doug Fir-paneled and lime-washed walls — in a “cashmere” hue — also lend a cocoon-like feel to the Beverly Boulevard store, which of course was all intentional. “The stores are a little bit funky in their own way, but they’re chic and bright and the wood is so calming to me,” Hadid said, adding, “And I love tchotchkes. All of our stores are going to have fun little things that make you feel like you’re kind of in someone’s personal space.”
The debut L.A. brick-and-mortar also reflects the brand’s ethos when it comes to sustainability.
“I love that we are using low impact materials like forged metal and antiques,” Hadid said, adding that the L.A. store will also be promoting sustainability through its Take-Back program, like it does in New York. “We will take items to be recycled in exchange for 10 percent off the next purchase, and then those items are sent to Re.Verso in Italy, which is a facility that takes recovered materials and then regenerates them into new sweaters. Then we circulate that back into our products. And we now are offering recycled cashmere pieces, which not only have a really beautiful texture but they also are a more affordable price. It’s just a great way to promote that circular economy and reduce textile waste, and we want to do that as much as possible.”
On what drew her to Beverly Hills as a location for Guest in Residence, Hadid said, “We wanted it to be somewhere people are already organically going to be walking by and doing their shopping. Beverly Hills is just such a perfect location for that….The cobblestone on the floor reminds me so much of the Bond Street cobblestone that’s on the street where our store is in New York. So that was a sign to me, like, ‘Oh, there’s a little piece of Bond Street in that store.’”
At opening, the L.A. store houses Guest in Residence’s fall 2024 and winter 2024 collections, however, Hadid has plans to build on that in the future with exclusive drops. “Right now we are going full force with our holiday and winter collections because, even if you’re in L.A. the nights are getting chilly. People are going to start traveling for holidays, and I think that fall and winter collections are really what people want and need right now,” Hadid explained. “But going into the summer, I have so many fun ideas of special things for L.A. How do I give it away without giving it away? Some of the things that I want to be exclusive at the L.A. store are very part of my California girl heart.”
“It will be different with collaborations that I’m dreaming about, or new collections more geared toward a West Coast customer,” she added. “We’ll have special things that are sold at each store that make more sense for that place.”
The brand has other expansion plans as well: Hadid is currently plotting the launch of a kids’ collection that she describes as “really near and dear to my heart,” tentatively for 2026, and she’s also eyeing Aspen as the site of another potential flagship. For now, Guest in Residence will be opening a pop-up in Aspen at the top of the new year. “I have other dreams and goals, but I’ll keep those in my brain until they come to be,” she said.
“We just opened our first pop-up in [South] Korea, which was so amazing and such an honor that we get to branch out in the way we are,” Hadid shared. “This comes off a great success at Le Bon Marché [pop-up] in France. So I think it’s just finding the places that our customers want and need us.”
Guest in Residence’s revenue is up 100 percent from last year, according to a representative for the brand, with direct sales through the stores and online accounting for half of its business and wholesale consisting of the other half.
Hadid also has more collaborations lined up, following in the wake of last year’s capsule collection with LuisaViaRoma and current collaboration with Caviar Kaspia. “Cashmere is such a fun material, it almost feels like art class when you’re forced to use one material from a different perspective, and that’s what collaborations feel like. When I’m able to jump into another company that has a language and a product that people love, and then apply our material to that is something that really excites me.”
Best of WWD
Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
