Philipp Plein’s Party in SoHo: Waiting for Fabolous
Partygoers packed into Philipp Plein’s Spring Street store Tuesday night to welcome the pop-up store to the neighborhood. The party was called for 5 to 7 p.m., with a special performance by New York rapper Fabolous. And in true Plein fashion, there was a lot of waiting around for the performance to begin.
The Plein shop, which opened Tuesday, was converted from a former Plein Sport pop-up that went in last February. Plein has a 10-year lease on the nearly 1,951-square-foot space that features Plein’s flashy ready-to-wear and accessories set against each wall and a substantial sneaker and footwear display. Plein has more than 110 Philipp Plein stores globally and opened a 4,000-square-foot store in the Beverly Center in Los Angeles last week. In the U.S. alone, there are eight full price Plein stores, with one Plein Sport store coming up in Las Vegas, and five outlet stores.
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Like the Beverly Center store, the SoHo shop carries the new Modern Renaissance and Thousand and One Nights collections. The store is decorated with custom Philipp Plein homeware fixtures and features contemporary lounge couches, marble podiums and chrome and glass tables. In addition to the main line rtw collections, there is footwear, eyewear and Philipp Plein timepieces.
While waiting to interview Plein, WWD chatted with celebrity stylist, designer and TV personality Phillip Bloch, who was making the rounds in SoHo having just come from the Barbie shop at Zara. Bloch has a personal connection to Barbie because in 2006 when Barbie and Ken were having problems, he was asked to give Ken a makeover. “I gave him dark hair and made him more metrosexual, which today is called ‘urban,'” said Bloch, who added that it must have worked, since Ken is still in the picture. “I saved their relationship,” he quipped.
Other guests at the party included Lil Mo’ Mozzarella, Flaviana Matata, Katya Tolstova, Ash Forde and Alexander Sim.
Two hours after the party began and was scheduled to end, Plein arrived around 7:05 p.m., Fabolous made his entrance closer to 8 p.m., and finally performed for the crowd at 8:20 p.m.
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