The US-based Nepalese fashion designer, Prabal Gurung, has launched his first-ever flagship store as a part of the ‘Love, Bleecker’ Programme, which targets to revitalise the former fashion hub and inspire a new wave of designers to shift to the area. Prabal is the project’s first Creative Director.
The latest flagship store will be located at 367 Bleecker Street in New York’s West Village and it has a rustic wooden floor and modern style rails and shelves for the designer’s range. The front window attributes a light installation by Edward Ross which was curated to portray sunrise and sunset in Prabal’s home country, Nepal. The store offers an overall feel of a mixture of his Nepalese tradition and New York design.
It is important to add here that Prabal has worked with some of the leading Bollywood actors like Priyanka Chopra, Alia Bhatt, and Ranveer Singh, designing dresses for these big celebrities on many occasions.
Speaking about his first store in the US, Prabal was quoted as saying by Vogue that, “I used to dream about having my own store, and I wanted to bring my roots and my heritage through it. Female shoppers will come in and witness these glamorous sequin dresses next to slogan T-shirts and cashmere shawls from Nepal, where the majority of our (Nepal’s) knitwear manufacturing is done by women. The brand is deeply rooted in what it means to make clothes, so I want people to figure all of that out.”
Notably, a portion of the sales from the flagship store will serve to the Shikshya Foundation which is based in Nepal, founded by Prabal himself, seven years back.
