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Tommy Bahama Throws Anchor On Fifth Avenue
The 13,000-square-foot store is the largest in the company's retail fleet.
NEW YORK
-- Tommy Bahama is determined to make harried and hurried New Yorkers relax.
On Saturday, the island-inspired brand will open the doors to its largest and most ambitious store to date, a 13,000-square-foot, three-level store and restaurant on Fifth Avenue and 45th Street in the Art Deco-designed Fred F. French Building. The store features a new design concept with nearly every feature chosen specifically for a New York City debut.
"We want the customer to feel like this is an urban resort," said Rob Goldberg, senior vice president of marketing for the Tommy Bahama Group, a division of Oxford Industries Inc. "We want this to feel like a little oasis. We want people to forget the hustle and bustle of Manhattan and come in here and chill out. It feels somewhat insulated and every detail we selected we put through the lens of 'Is it relaxing?'" This ranges from the plants to the mannequins to the music.
But for a brand whose slogan is "Life is one long weekend," the store was designed to appeal to Type-A New Yorkers.
Key design features include wooden shutters constructed from former planks of the Coney Island boardwalk that the company purchased when they were torn up and replaced by plastic and concrete. "We bought two-and-a-half miles in linear feet and created shutters," Goldberg said. "We're using them to connect the upstairs and downstairs. Everything in here is custom; nothing is off the shelf."
Customers can enter from three doorways, two on Fifth Avenue -- one into the men's department and one into the bar -- or from 45th Street. The two Fifth Avenue entrances are placed...