There were pedestrians ambling and drinkers drinking alfresco on the warm June day that Carla Sozzani stood outside what would shortly become 10 Corso Como New York, the American outpost of her pioneering Italian concept shop. That descriptor, now common for boutiques that stock not only fashion, but also art, furniture, books and whatever else tickles their proprietors, could well have been coined for hers. (According to her, it was.)
“It has the feel of an Italian piazza, no?” Ms. Sozzani said on a site visit to New York, looking out toward the water. “I hope it stays like this.”
But we were at the South Street Seaport — cobblestoned, yes, but not often imagined as Italianate — a New York landmark that has had many lives: bustling port, scrubby artists’ community, hurricane victim, tourist trap. Ms. Sozzani’s store is part of its continuing transformation.
10 Corso Como is to be one of the tent poles of the new new Seaport, which its developer, the Howard Hughes Corporation, hopes to coax into a hub of culture and commerce in New York City.
The company is betting on Ms. Sozzani as one of the new local attractions to do the pulling. Its chief executive, David R. Weinreb, spent five years courting her, and the developer is a partner with her on the store.
“She was initially not interested in opening a store in New York,” Mr. Weinreb said. “There were dozens of calls to her.” With the store now about to open, Mr. Weinreb added, he is confident “Carla will in fact be the pillar that we wanted in the area.” (The company declined to comment on the terms of the partnership, though Hughes has been known to subsidize rent for its commercial tenants.)
Ms. Sozzani’s original 10 Corso Como — at number 10 Corso Como, in a former garage in the Porta Nuova neighborhood of Milan — opened in 1991, and in the 27 years since, it has become a much imitated blueprint for high-end retail. The store sells luxury fashion from Prada, Gucci, Dior and Comme des Garçons, along with artists’ editions and ceramics.
Ms. Sozzani had been a magazine editor before opening the store — she was famously fired from the Italian edition of Elle — and considered her store a kind of living magazine. It was a place to browse and linger as well as to buy. (She put chairs everywhere for the purpose.)
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