Daily Front Row

2012 December 11

Yves Saint Laurent's Chicago Redux

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Saint Laurent
Hedi Slimane View Gallery

(NEW YORK) Guess who's packing their bags and heading back to the windy city: (Yves) Saint Laurent has signed a lease in Chicago for a 2,375-square-foot store at 11 East Walton Street in the Waldorf-Astoria. The boutique will be located on the hotel's ground floor in the throes of Rush Street's Gold Coast shopping stretch, alongside Marc Jacobs and Perchance, a local indie-owned boutique. While Oak Street has traditionally been Chicago's primary thoroughfare for upper-echelon luxury retailers, Rush Street enjoys a heavier flow of potential shoppers thanks to more foot traffic. 

The new store is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the original YSL store on Oak Street, which closed in 2010, when 'Yves' was still in the title and Stefano Pilati was on design duty. As for YSL's former space on Oak Street, Escada took over the lease quietly and mysteriously, heralding their arrival by plastering international mod Iselin Steiro's face across the windows, opening its doors in May 2012—over two years after YSL moved out.