Armani to hit U.S. with stores

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 8/3/2001 5:10:00 PM

New York — Designer Giorgio Armani will bring his home collection to the United States this October, with the opening of his Armani Casa stores both here and in Los Angeles.

Similar to the original store in Milan, the U.S. stores will have a loft-like atmosphere and polished concrete floors and skylights. They were designed by Armani and Janson Goldstein Associates.

The New York store, which will be located at 97 Greene Street in Soho, will span two levels totaling 5,900 sq. feet. The Los Angeles location, at 157 N. Robertson in West Hollywood, will take up 6,300 sq. feet over one level.

Premiered last October in Milan, the home collection includes linens, furniture, lighting and decorative objects. And the color palette mirrors the clothing line. The company plans to release two collections a year: spring/summer and fall/winter.

"Refined simplicity" is how the company describes its sheets, which consist of both cotton and linen. The solid-color, yarn-dyed cotton sheets will have double-face satin sewn with an edge-trimming machine. The linen is produced of stone-washed, delicate délavé linen. Boucle wool and spun cashmere blankets hand dyed in Tibet will be included, as will yarn-dyed silk/cotton quilts.

Place mats complement the tabletop offerings and include fabrications of Butal, a plant from the Philippines that can be twined, linen, a linen and cotton blend, rich pleated cotton, and dyed yarn in large stripes.

Besides Milan, the Armani Casa collection is available at Harrods in London in its own boutique and in a freestanding store in Athens, Greece. Additional stores are slated to open within the next 18 months in such cities as Paris, Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea.