The Row, the Olsen Twins’ Fashion Label, Opens a Store in the Hamptons

There was a Cybertruck parked on Foremost Road in East Hampton, outdoors the Altuzarra retailer. It was a Sunday afternoon in June, and site visitors stalled for a second. Even the wealthy aren’t resistant to rubbernecking a brutalist behemoth.

The monster truck marked the tip of an avenue of monograms — the island’s essential luxurious purchasing drag, with $850 raffia purses and $15,000 ornamental surfboards. You already know their names: Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Lululemon.

Two and a half miles down this similar road, nevertheless, quaintness emerged. East Hampton changed into Amagansett, and that flashy boutique strip grew to become a city sq. with white wood-paneled cottages. There was a shoe retailer known as Brunch, a youngsters’s clothes chain known as Pink Hen, a jewellery and present store known as Love Adorned. A Cybertruck right here would learn as a declaration of struggle.

It was close to these cottages that the Row, a model based in 2006 by Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, quietly opened a retailer on Memorial Day weekend.

Quietly is how the Row tends to function. Not solely in its clothes — usually described as “quiet luxury,” a time period used to explain very costly fundamentals — but additionally in its communication.

The founders not often give interviews, promote or in any other case promote their line. Whereas the Row did announce its Amagansett opening on Instagram, that account is more outwardly devoted to sharing modern art than to shifting product. In February, the model brought on a stir at Paris Vogue Week by asking its runway present attendees to “chorus from capturing or sharing any content material throughout your expertise” — which is, for a lot of, the first motive for attending a trend present. The viewers was inspired to put in writing down ideas as a substitute.

By some means this stance works. In an trade overrun by influencers, the Row’s silence is stark. Monasticism is stylish. There may be an impression of exclusivity and style, buoyed by the acute costs. One of many Row’s hottest objects, the Margaux bag, ranges in worth from $3,490 to $6,810, relying on measurement and materials. It’s timeless and ladylike, the sort of purse which may remind Kendall Jenner of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The Row’s shops even have a repute for being intimidating at occasions, even amongst seasoned high-end consumers.

One loyal Row buyer instructed me she felt like “peasantry” within the Los Angeles retailer, which homes an untouchable swimming pool. On the retailer in Manhattan — a townhouse with a limestone spiral staircase — “there may be one man who works there that every one my buddies are afraid of, who radiates a really ‘you may’t sit right here’ vibe,” mentioned Jess Graves, the author of a purchasing publication known as The Love List, “even to ladies I do know who stroll in carrying the model head to toe.”

The Amagansett store is completely different. It operates out of a home with roots within the nineteenth century, previously occupied by Tiina the Retailer, the Hamptons’ Gap for billionaires. (Tiina stocked the Row.)

It has a porch and a display door and a woven beige carpet. The becoming rooms are harshly lit behind denim patchwork curtains. (Against this, the spacious wood-floored dressing rooms on the Higher East Aspect retailer, the place I lately tried on a $1,550 white cotton poplin tent costume that made me look, tragically, like a hospital affected person, have tender lighting and softer robes.)

There isn’t a assertion art work in Amagansett, not like the London retailer, the place an oval mild set up by James Turrell greets guests on the entrance. The classic furnishings is noteworthy — there’s a black chaise formed like an individual from the Seventies by Olivier Mourgue Bouloum and a white painted picket lounge chair from the Thirties by Robert Mallet-Stevens. However the décor, with its Asian and African influences, is just not the purpose.

The purpose of the shop is the massive number of jewellery, residence wares, snacks and skincare by greater than 20 manufacturers and artisans that aren’t the Row. Shampoo from Florence. Beaded necklaces from Greece. A mother-of-pearl caviar set. A bronze lighter carved to resemble tree bark. A packet of dried mango and a jar of uncooked almonds. Classic glass candlesticks that may be bought solely in a set of a dozen for $16,000.

There are racks of ready-to-wear garments made by the Row, after all, the choice tailor-made to this seaside city: bike shorts ($1,050), denim shirts (additionally $1,050), ribbed tank tops ($670), sleeveless silk maxi-dresses ($1,890). Ms. Graves purchased herself a raffia bag right here earlier within the season. (“It felt very acceptable whereas I’m out right here this summer season,” she mentioned.)

However the Row confirmed that the Amagansett retailer is its first try at a “native” retailer idea. What this presumably means is an area that’s extra relaxed, full of objects that complement the model’s imaginative and prescient of itself, staffed by gross sales associates who don’t scare folks away however warmly assist consumers monitor down sold-out jelly flats. Not that the Row’s followers are simply scared away: Even those that are intimidated don’t keep away for lengthy, these masochists for cream-colored cashmere.

On reflection, the favored jelly footwear, together with the seaside towels that fashions wore as scarves on the Row’s runway in September, could have been an indication that the model was loosening up — that brightness and humor had been coming to this austere world. (Its most up-to-date look ebook confirmed a silky camisole costume layered over pants, Y2K-style.)

A British shopper of the Row visiting the Amagansett retailer marveled on the vibe shift. The place was the icy indifference? “I don’t assume it will fly with the viewers right here,” she mentioned.