Hand-Finished Steel and Bronze Elevate Khaite’s Madison Ave. Boutique

Prior to Khaite’s Fall/Winter 2025 runway show—which unfurled in a glowing golden ring engulfed by a darkened Park Avenue Armory—the beloved New York City-based fashion and accessories brand, founded by Catherine Holstein, debuted a Madison Avenue boutique. The 2,000-square-foot store, as well as the luxury label’s 4,000-square-foot Mercer Street flagship, and even its runway show were all imagined in collaboration with architectural designer Griffin Frazen, Holstein’s husband. For Madison Avenue, Frazen adapted and advanced Khaite’s retail visual language while exploring a new system of spatial organization.

As with Khaite’s releases, the retail concept itself is defined by elegant, tactile materiality—with Madison Avenue reflecting an evolution of the steel and bronze found in the flagship. “We had a few small accents of bronze in the downtown store and knew we wanted to feature it more prominently in the Madison Ave. project,” Frazen tells Surface. “We aim for a minimalism and purity where the materials are not simply decorative, they are also the structure. For me this speaks to the idea of luxury—the materials and techniques may be more time intensive and costly but they are of the highest quality and they last.”

At the downtown store, unfinished steel forms walls and enclosures. Frazen sees that retail experience as more of a journey through sections. In contrast, Madison Avenue is an open immersion. Here, textured steel with an almost iridescent quality takes on a new role—as a modular floor system. Frazen was inspired by Japanese tatami mats and their associated rules, where patterns inform guests where they should sit and how they should move.

Applying this concept to the hand-finished steel, Frazen created a grid of loose floor segments, some of which curl into displays and seats. These were brake-formed; thicker than sheet metal, they weigh several hundred pounds. “They’re heavy but they’re not permanently fixed,” Frazen explains. This allows for modularity, or new pieces to be developed and rotated in.

Frazen appreciates steel and bronze as materials that endure. “They age, but they last far longer than most commercial building products,” he says. “I love this durational quality where you see the change due to use, or foot traffic, or weather. The exterior of the Madison Ave. facade is a warm golden color now, but in six months to a few years it will be very dark. Fashion is fast but I think one test of good architecture is how it looks over time, not just on day one.”

For the aforementioned exterior, Frazen needed approval from the landmark commission for the redesign of the seven window bays, which now feature custom solid bronze frames encapsulating oversized glass panels. “We had an interior layout which was contingent on the facade so it was very important that we saw it through,” he says. He also shifted the Madison Avenue door, and added one more entrance on 69th Street to reorient the store’s flow.

“I like designing simultaneously from the inside out and the outside in,” he adds. “It was a bit risky because we had to proceed with all the interior planning and permitting without knowing if the facade would be approved. We wanted the facade to be unique but also feel part of the fabric of the neighborhood. I also thought we would have the best chance with landmarks if we made the case that we understood and wanted to honor the Upper East Side. Solid bronze seemed like the right material for bridging the brand’s design language with the local context.”

Ultimately, Frazen designed the space to draw attention to the items within. As the product offering is different between Mercer and Madison, with the latter oriented toward accessories, jewelry, and rare pieces, the spaces feel similar yet distinct. “I try to design these stores as site specific as possible—and produce custom elements for a specific purpose and context,” he says. “Selfishly, but also for the brand’s sake, I try to incorporate experimentation and technical innovation, not relying too much on what we have already done. I wanted to stay true to the concept and language we established but demonstrate that it was flexible and adaptable and sensitive to different site conditions, environments, and cultures.”

An atmosphere, cast in natural light and wrapped in polished gray plaster walls, is born from small custom details—like the pulls on the fitting room doors. “I hope people see it as a creative and intellectual project in its own right that extends the brand’s philosophy and transcends simply being a store,” Frazen says. “I can only speak for myself but I believe that it’s not lost on customers when the brand really follows through on their philosophy and approaches everything they make with the same standards that they do for their clothes.” Next up for Frazen and Holstein is a Los Angeles Khaite store on the corner of Melrose Pl. opening toward the end of 2025.