Two years ago it seemed like a big risk when Irene Neuwirth, the Los Angeles jeweler known for her vibrant upscale creations, opened a store on Madison Avenue. “They said it is deserted uptown and stores are closing.”
But that was 2022. Now the 1.2-mile prime area between 57th and 79th Streets is lined with new fashion and watch stores, art galleries and a noticeable influx of jewelers, mostly contemporary independent names. And more are on the way.
“Madison Avenue has been reinvigorated,” said Joseph L. Hudson, a senior vice president at the real estate company CBRE, who recently helped the jeweler FoundRae find a store site on Madison between 66th and 67th Streets. “Downtown brands are coming uptown to meet their customers where they live.”
Hot fashion labels such as Khaite, Johanna Ortiz and Toteme have moved in. There also is Giorgio Armani’s mixed-use building at 65th Street, which opened with great fanfare in October; and Assouline’s bookstore and cafe, and the newly renovated Surrey hotel.
And while some jewelers — including Graff, Fred Leighton/Kwiat, Buccellati, Sidney Garber, Stephen Russell, Pomellato and Paul Morelli — have been longtime presences on Madison Avenue, in November Van Cleef & Arpels opened a location less than a mile from the Fifth Avenue site it has occupied since 1940. The contemporary fine jewelers Sophie Bille Brahe, Marlo Laz and Alison Lou — and the French heritage brand Boucheron — have established boutiques. The British designer Jessica McCormack said hers would open in March.
In all, there now are about 40 jewelry shops on or just off Madison Avenue from 57th to 86th Streets, according to Matthew Bauer, the president of the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.), a community association that covers the area.
Bust to Boom
Madison Avenue has always been one of the world’s most prestigious luxury shopping streets, on par with Bond Street in London, Ginza in Tokyo and Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. About a decade ago, however, there was a shift, with many brands and designers opening shops in the SoHo and Meatpacking neighborhoods downtown to attract the young, affluent clientele moving into the scores of new residential developments there.
At the time, Madison Avenue’s commercial rents had reached a high of $1,771 per square foot a month, according to a report by CBRE: Global Commercial Real Estate Services. That made it hard for many stores to turn a profit, Mr. Hudson said, and closures began.
Barneys New York, the chic department store at Madison and East 61st Street, closed in early 2020. And the pandemic accelerated the retail exodus. “There was a period when a lot of Madison’s prime real estate was vacant,” Mr. Hudson said.
In March 2021, retail vacancies in the Madison Avenue B.I.D. area peaked at 19 percent. That was a tipping point, and rents began to drop, which gave independent jewelers like Ms. Neuwirth a reason to look at the once prohibitively expensive street. (Barneys had been her collection’s exclusive seller in New York.)
“When Barneys left there was a big hole in the uptown shopping world,” said the designer, who also has a store on Melrose Place in Los Angeles.
According to the CBRE report, the average asking rent on Madison between 57th and 72nd Streets is now $906 per square foot, which is still higher than the average asking rent of $716 per square foot in Manhattan’s prime retail corridors such as Fifth Avenue and the Meatpacking neighborhood.
But while Fifth Avenue caters to mega brands such as Tiffany & Company and Bulgari with their sprawling multilevel stores, the higher you go on Madison, the smaller and more affordable the spaces tend to be, Mr. Hubbard said. “There’s ample opportunity for some of these jewelry brands to come into the market, open a store and be successful.”
A Distinctive Place
Mr. Bauer said that, in his 25 years working at the Madison Avenue B.I.D., the storefront names along the street had changed, but its residential flavor had not.
“It’s an international shopping destination, but ultimately it is the local community that makes our district the distinctive place that it is.”
That sense of community is what attracted Beth Hutchens, the owner of FoundRae and a self-proclaimed downtown girl. “I have a store in Tribeca, live above my store and thought everyone comes downtown,” she said.
That was until her daughter started school on the Upper East Side and Ms. Hutchens started spending more time uptown. “I used to be intimidated by Madison Avenue,” she said, “I thought it was a place for just the big players.”
Many of the newer boutiques aren’t jewelry stores in the traditional style, with salespeople behind glass cases. The new locations are colorful and personal. Ms. Hutchens decorated her 1,160-square-foot boutique with antiques and artifacts she collected over the years, including a miniature mouse house. The walls are awash in deep red with jewelry artfully displayed in eye-level cases and what she calls “discovery drawers” that clients can open to find one-of-a-kind pieces.
“I love the idea of creating a sense of wonder, an experience,” she said. The store also has a jeweler and engraver on site.
In September, Boucheron opened a 3,900-square-foot store on Madison Avenue near 65th Street, its first in New York in its 165-year history.
“I wanted a local touch in the store,” said Hélène Poulit-Duquesne, the company’s chief executive. So she worked closely with the French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon to create a space that reflected New York’s strong Art Deco heritage in its furnishings and graphic color block rugs, but also nodded to the house’s roots on Place Vendôme with a Delisle chandelier and whimsical wallpaper by Atelier d’Offard.
“The traffic is not as big compared to Fifth Avenue,” Ms. Poulit-Duquesne said, “but we are a very selective brand, so coming to Madison made more sense for us.”
A few blocks north, Sophie Bille Brahe’s boutique celebrates her Danish roots. For the past several years, the jeweler, who is based in Copenhagen, had used a hotel suite in Lower Manhattan to meet with clients. But when it came to open her own space, she said her clients were uptown.
The 1,925-square-foot store on Madison between 77th and 78th Streets, above the Sant Ambroeus restaurant, is a bright and airy space with furnishing and accessories by Danish designers such as Borge Mogensen and Poul Henningsen. It showcases her new collection of ethereal Venetian-made vases alongside her playful, minimalist diamond and pearl jewelry.
“I wanted it to be like my boutique in Copenhagen, which is very personal,” Ms. Bille Brahe said.
That intimate touch also was the driving design force for Sauer, a Brazilian jeweler whose outpost at 67th Street is its first shop outside its native country. The space, which showcases the brand’s colorful, bold gemstone jewelry, was designed by Aldo Urbinati from Estudio Tupi and furnished with Brazilian midcentury furniture from the likes of Jorge Zalszupin and others, said Stephanie Wenk, the brand’s creative director.
The brand also plans to have rotating exhibitions of rare stones it owns, such as a Brazilian rubellite now on display at the Museum of Natural History.
With so much activity on Madison Avenue, there are few vacancies, and prices are creeping up, Mr. Hudson of CBRE said.
Ms. Neuwirth said she got in at the right time, and now was cultivating a mix of loyal clients and new neighborhood shoppers.
“We are selling high-ticket items here often,” she said, noting that in one week last month the store had sold a pair of $70,000 rubellite earrings and a $40,000 morganite necklace.
“Being on Madison Avenue is like a fairy tale,” Ms. Neuwirth said, “and I’m still pinching myself that I have a store here.”
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