Call it the store that screen-fatigue built. After famously declaring Everlane an online-only experience, CEO Michael Preysman is again opening brick-and-mortar shops—the first debuted in New York last November and the total could rise to four by the end of this year. “I love design and community, and there’s no way to [show] that other than a physical space,” he says of the budding portfolio of outposts designed in–house.
Opening March 3 in San Francisco’s Mission District, where Everlane’s offices are based, a 1904 storefront has been retrofitted for 2018 and beyond, with floor-to-ceiling glass doors, original redwood floors, and sound installations that play the steady hum of the brand’s factories, including the LEED–certified denim facility outside Ho Chi Minh City and the T-shirt production plant in L.A. “Our goal is always to retain the integrity of the building,” says Preysman, whose team exposed all of the building’s original joists in the name of transparency—Everlane’s trademark verbiage (the brand’s candor is its de facto calling card: it shares everything from the cost of materials to factory information with customers). “People are so used to clean and beautiful joists, but in the 1900s they were redwood trees, and you can see all the rough cut saw-marks.” Preysman is bringing the digital experience to life with separate return, checkout, and search bars, but the experiential moments only available in-person really sing. Take, for example, the fitting rooms: “There’s a Turrell-esque lightscape that opens up the nine-foot-tall fitting rooms with 16-foot ceilings, a cylinder that goes straight up and you can see the sky.” No amount of convenience can replace that.
