THE SECRET TO BROWNS' SURVIVAL

How one of the fashion industry’s best-loved boutiques has weathered the storm

- MELANIE ABRAMS

Other retail hubs may be in distress, as New York increasingly resembles a retail desert, with Barneys in seemingly never-ending liquidation sales and Opening Ceremony closing its stores. But here in London, the ultimate multi-brand boutique, Browns, is still going strong at 50. Sprawling along South Molton Street in a series of connected townhouses, the boutique was run by Joan Burstein (nicknamed Mrs. B) and her family until it was acquired by the luxury e-platform Farfetch in 2015.

Known as the first place to stock styles by the likes of John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, the store has maintained its reputation for supporting new talent by, for example, collaborating on a capsule collection in 2018 with the London-based American designer Michael Halpern.

To celebrate its anniversary, Browns plans to close its current location this summer and move to a four-floor site at 39 Brook Street. The new 887-square-meter store is to have space for rotating collections, pop-ups and a restaurant. (Its neighbors will be the swanky Claridge’s hotel and Handel & Hendrix in London, a museum that encompasses the home of the 18th-century composer Georg Frideric Handel and an apartment where Jimi Hendrix lived in the late 1960s.)

But before that shift, fashion-world fans of Browns recalled why it mattered. And why it still does. (The interviews have been edited and condensed.)

Laudomia Pucci, deputy chairwoman and image director, Emilio Pucci

“The store had its own personality. It didn’t look like a supermodern store. It had its own charm and I thought that was nice, because it was the charm of the family and the personality of the family.”

Osman Yousefzada, a London-based designer who founded his Osman label in 2008